KARACHI: Administrator Karachi Barrister Murtaza Wahab on Wednesday said that the main problem of all our local bodies is that 95 per cent of their monetary resources go to salaries and pensions.
“Article 140-A of the constitution is widely discussed but no one knows what is actually in it. Pervez Musharraf’s local government system has affected the balance of provincial and local government powers. In the past, instead of increasing the revenue of local bodies, there were demands for more institutions and powers.
The main reason for the destruction of Karachi’s system is the commercialization policy of 2003 which destroyed the infrastructure on the main roads,” the Administrator expressed these views while addressing a luncheon at Frere Hall in honor of the senior officers undergoing training at the National Institute of Management.
Also present on the occasion were Metropolitan Commissioner Syed Afzal Zaidi, Finance Advisor Imtiaz Abro, Director General Parks Junaidullah Khan.
The Administrator said that the mayor has been empowered in the new local government system. Supervision of solid waste management and collection of property tax will make local bodies financially stable.
Barrister Murtaza Wahab said that Karachi is the focus of media and everyone is saying that this city has been destroyed. “As a citizen, I think the main reason for the destruction of the Karachi system is that in 2003 a commercialization policy was introduced in the city under which about 20 or 22 streets of Karachi were commercialized by the then city nazim. When the next city nazim came, he also commercialized 18, 20 roads, about 40 to 45 important roads of Karachi which were residential were declared commercial from 2003 to 2008. Many citizens of Karachi went to court and challenged this commercialization policy of the government,” he added.
He said that in order to improve the provision of local government services, it is necessary to activate the process of revenue collection, without which no matter how many powers are given, nothing will happen.
The Administrator said that KMC has the power to collect taxes but it collects only Rs. 210 million for the whole year while the city of Bombay collects an annual municipal tax of Rs 21 billion which amounts to Rs 42 billion in Pakistani rupees.
He said “We have worked out a different strategy for KMC to collect municipal tax through utility bills. The KMC would have gotten estimated Rs 7.2 billion annually and if even Rs 1 billion of them were invested in each district, we would not have to ask for money from the provincial government or anyone else,” he added. The Administrator said that unfortunately that proposal had been turned into politics.
“There was no check and balance in the 2001 local government system, the consequences of which we have been suffering to this day,” he said.
Barrister Murtaza Wahab said that after the restoration of democracy in 2010, the system of Pervez Musharraf was abolished in all the provinces. Even in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2013, the PTI government did not maintain this system.
He said that we are still criticized even though we started the work of local government reform in 2020 and decided that the local government should have the basic work related to them while the provincial government should have its own subjects. “Under this policy, the chairman of the Solid Waste Management Board was made the Mayor of Karachi to carry out the sanitation work in a better way,” the Administrator said.
He said that we will do our best to make the system of local government comprehensive. However, if anyone thinks that the role of the provincial government should be abolished by empowering this system, we do not agree with that.
He said that every effort is being made to improve the infrastructure, parks and highways of Karachi. New buses for Karachi will reach Karachi from China in a few days. Barrister Murtaza Wahab said that the Sindh government is taking steps to solve the problems of public transport. He said that there is a lot of room for development in the city.
Wahab presented National Institute of Management Chief Instructor Abdul Khaliq Sheikh with a shield on behalf of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. A souvenir was presented to Administrator Karachi by National Institute of Management.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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