KARACHI: Commercial use of residential plots opposed
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Nov 16: Speakers at a seminar on Friday urged the government not to change the land-use of plots as it puts an additional pressure on the already overburdened civic amenities and infrastructure.
They were speaking at a meeting organized jointly by Friedrich-Naumann Foundation and an NGO — Shehri — to provide a forum where people and public representatives could discuss various issues.
They said that the infrastructure — electricity wiring, pipelines for water supply and sewerage, telephones, roads etc — is laid down according to a plan to cope with demands of a certain number of people.
When the land-use of a plot is changed from residential to commercial, the number of people using the area increases by five times and the infrastructure could not meet the demands, so after absorbing some increase it eventually collapses, they said.
Currently the KDA is planning to commercialize certain portions of the PECHS, but it could become difficult for the infrastructure of the area to meet the additional demand.
They said instead of putting more burden on the old city areas by changing the land-use, new areas around the metropolis should be developed with its own infrastructure, so that people could move there.
They said the KESC was facing “line lose” of around 38 per cent of electricity, whereas 18 per cent was acceptable as an international standard. The loss of 1 per cent in rupee terms is equal to Rs500 million, they observed.
A lot of power was being stolen in the posh residential localities of KDA Scheme No 1, DHA, Clifton, PECHS, etc. They said that in certain houses when the meters were shifted outside the premises their consumption increased by 200 to 400 per cent — that is the amount of electricity earlier being stolen.
The speakers said if all the people paid their bills honestly there would be no reason to increase the tariffs. They alleged that electricity was being stolen, in majority of instances, in connivance with the KESC staff.
Similarly, water supply and sewerage system laid down decades back in the city have also been under severe pressure and are unable to cope with the population growth, so one heard of regular water closures, and overflowing sewers inundating roads.
They said that a project — K-3 — was in the implementation stage and 100 million gallons water daily would be available to the city in the next four to five years.
The speakers criticized the past governments for not spending the $38 billion foreign and an equal amount of domestic loans judiciously in the country. Giving some data of the growing corruption in the system of loans, they said that loans were given on political basis and then written off.
They said if the amount written off was calculated on the daily basis, the figures would show that between 1970 and 1987, Rs200,000 were written off every day, while between 1988 and 1996 loans of Rs3.3 million were written off each day. But between 1997 and 1999 24 million rupees had been written off daily.
Giving one instance of how the corrupt bankers were being dealt with, they said that a banker, who was associated with one of the biggest banks of the country, had embezzled Rs2.4 billion and the action taken against him was that his promotion was delayed for three months.
The Shehri had invited four Nazims — Jamshed Town, Gulshan-i-Iqbal Town, Shah Faisal Town, and Korangi Town — though all of them had confirmed, only one turned up.
Jamshed Town Nazim Ahmad Qasim Parekh, Shehri’s Naveed Hussain, KESC’s Khalid Iqbal, KW&SB’s Sulaiman Chandio, Amber Alibhoy, and others spoke on the occasion.
