Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) is yet to get benefit of its multi-stories car parking plaza situated at New Preedy Street, Saddar, though this project was completed about eight years ago. The multi-million CDGK car parking plaza, the first modern parking plaza of Pakistan, was constructed to reduce traffic congestion in Saddar and its surrounding streets.
The project was based on the idea to declare whole Saddar locality as no-parking zone, so that citizens can park their vehicles in this plaza. However, despite the passage of about eight years the government has yet to summon courage to declare Saddar a no parking zone; hence, this project is still a big failure and incurring huge operating losses for KMC.
The first two floors of this plaza are comprised a modern shopping center; however, the KMC during last eight years has not rented these luxurious shops in the heart of Saddar, the commercial and trade hub of Karachi. This apathy of bureaucracy is depriving the cash-stripped KMC of huge revenue.
The KMC has also failed to maintain this modern building. Gutter water freely flows in front of this building, damaging road and footpath. The manholes outside this building are without covers, but the municipal authorities concerned do not take efforts to keep this area clean.
Once the car parking plaza is fully revived it would help in reducing traffic jams in the area, besides lowering levels of noise and air pollution. As Saddar is called the heart of Karachi, a positive change in this locality would have positive effects on other trade and commercial localities of the city, besides developing a civic sense in citizens and improving governance image of the Sindh government, as well as, KMC.