- Karachi’s woes don’t need new problems
Federal Law Minister Farogh Naseem’s loud thinking about the use of Article 149 (4) of the Constitution, for the federal government to take over Karachi has raised concerns among other stakeholders in the provincial metropolis, the PPP-led Sindh government whose capital it is, and the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, which is controlled by the MQM factor to which Mr Naseem himself belongs. While he may be assumed to speak for the federal government, the reaction of Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani, that the PTI federal government could not tolerate the PPP provincial government, indicates how one stakeholder would take such a step.
Karachi has many problems, ranging from plastic waste blocking the city’s drainage, something which has proved quite literally fatal this monsoon, to a piling up of other civic problems. These problems cannot be afforded anywhere, not least in the country’s largest city, its financial and industrial hub, and its most important port. The federal government should realise that any action it contemplates under Article 149 (4) will merely degenerate in partisan point-scoring rather than solving the megalopolis’ problems, which are myriad.
What is required is that the federal government should act as part of solution, and not be part of the problem. It should act not as a partisan force, but to bring together all the stakeholders so as to work out how the city’s problems are to be solved. The most immediate problem, that of plastic waste, is not just a civic problem, but a harbinger of time to come, as such waste plays an increasingly important role in climate change. That problem will not be tackled by promises such as the Prime Minister made on his recent visit, nor by creating a new problem over who is to run Karachi, but by a lot of thankless backbreaking labour that the federal government alone cannot provide. Besides, it needs to decide whether it is worth it to create another partisan problem, another issue which will divide the entire country, at the juncture, when the country is beset with so many problems both at home and abroad. It is not as if the government has avoided any fights in the past. There is no need for it to add to what is already too long a list for comfort.