- A city let down by its elected leaders
While the monsoons have just started, two days of light to medium rainfall have already paralysed Karachi, the industrial hub of the country. Water and power supplies in the city remained suspended for two days and in some areas on the third day also, hundreds of homes were flooded and reportedly 26 persons died, mostly due to electrocution. Thousands were marooned in the flooded low-lying localities. A major grid station was under threat from the hill torrents. This led the city administration to call in the Army. The emergency measure had to be taken as the army’s engineering corps alone has the trained manpower and the equipment needed to rescue a large section of population, secure the city’s vital installations and build levees to stop the inflow of water to low-lying areas.
What happened in Karachi early this week was not unique. Similar flooding of localities followed by the suspension of water and power supplies, and deaths took place, in 2017and 2018 also. But no lessons were learnt and no action taken to avert upheavals of the sort. Bad governance is the major reason behind the devastation. The PPP, which has ruled the province without interruption for 11 years, failed to build the capacity of the institutions. Many think it neglected Karachi as it failed to win a majority of seats from the city. While other provinces too have turned out to be ill prepared to deal with calamities of the sort, Sindh stands out as the most negligent.
Political rivalries too have resulted in the failure to upgrade the city’s infrastructure. . Karachi Mayor Waeem Akhtar, who belongs to the MQM, has blamed the Sindh government for not devolving powers to KMC revenue departments. Despite the MQM being an ally of the PTI, the latter considers it a potent rival and hesitates to take any measure that could strengthen it in Karachi.
There is a need on the part of the Karachi city district government, the Sindh government and the federal government to rise above their contentions. They have to jointly improve the mega city’s infrastructure and empower its civic institutions as a safe and secure Karachi would benefit the entire country.
