| April 26, 2002 | Friday | Safar 12, 1423 |
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THE Sindh government has made a law which, in effect, institutionalizes corruption. This ignominy is achieved through the promulgation of the Sindh Regulation and Control (Use of Plots and Construction of Buildings) Ordinance, 2002. The measure keeps alive the Jam Sadiq tradition.
Standing at the footsteps of the Quaid’s Mazar, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who knew his minister well, queried: “I hope that you have not allotted this land to some builder”. In whichever abode Jam’s soul resides, he must surely be smiling to see those professedly striving against corruption corrupting the society like never before.
The new dispensation concretizes illegalities and raises a multi-storied edifice of corruption. If a building juts onto a road, sits astride a pavement, leans onto the neighbour’s compound, is structurally weak, has narrow corridors making flight from fire, earthquake or other calamity impossible, what to speak of being a monstrosity of a structure offending every aesthetic rule and built in contravention of every public safety regulation it can be “regularized”. And every such perversion can be gratified “on payment of the fees as may be prescribed”.
What pleases our illustrious governor displeases every law-abiding citizen. Sindh has a long tradition of loot and plunder, however, the dacoits who earlier infested forests have now taken up residence in the heart of the metropolis. Today it is not the hapless traveller who provides the pickings, our present day robber barons feed on the citizenry from a place which ought to jealously guard the city’s virtue, the Civic Centre.
The Karachi Development Authority (KDA) leviathan and its serpentine cousin, the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA), have been given the legal mandate to coil around, crush and devour all that is good in the city. Every year the citizens of Karachi pay 1,234 million rupees to KDA and KBCA. KBCA, whose sole task is to ensure that buildings are constructed in accordance with rules and regulations, depletes the city’s resources by over 250 million rupees a year. The perennial drain by these organizations on the city’s resources has rendered the city financially bankrupt.
The promulgation of this Ordinance confirms that KBCA utterly failed to fulfil its statutory charter. The blazing guns of accountability are nothing but a child’s poppycock when tuned onto the obdurate KDA and KBCA. The brigadiers who now sit astride have not subdued these beasts. The ropes in their hands are the wrong ends of the yolk and the beasts move to further gorge the city.
One had hoped that with the removal of all political pressures from KDA and KBCA, a reason cited for their incompetence and corruption, strict accountability of those who failed to perform their duty would follow. What we see instead is failure being rewarded. The regularizing fee will be recovered by KBCA to feed itself. A perverse precedent has been established. If you fail to do your job you are not penalized but are rewarded and the public pays for it - “Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain” (Paradise Lost by Milton).
There are 913 employees of KBCA. The Department of Buildings of the New York City, which performs functions similar to KBCA, has a workforce of about 400. The 14.7 million population of New York exceeds Karachi’s by well over 3 million. But then there is no accountability bureau in New York. Nor is there any city institution under the strict discipline of the army. And the pleasure of the governor of the state of New York does not result in the promulgation of a ‘law’.
On its part the government of Sindh holds the courts in contempt and abhors the laws of the province. This is best demonstrated in the words of the new Ordinance, Section 5 of which states, that: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force or judgment, order or decree of any court, any building constructed ... in violation of the provisions of the [Sindh Building Control] Ordinance or regulations made thereunder, may be regularized by the authority appointed under the Ordinance on the conditions and on payment of the fees as may be prescribed”.
In other words what a court of law, including the High Court and the Supreme Court, has decided is not worth the paper it is written on, provided one has the money to pay off KBCA. If a political government had made such a law it would have been dismissed and the Assembly dissolved, and rightly so. But this is a government, which loudly proclaims its commitment to institution building, rooting out corruption and upholding the rule of law! Interestingly enough the Regional Accountability Bureau has filed a number of references against members of the previous governments who had illegally regularized buildings, some of which have also resulted in convictions by the Accountability Courts.
There are so many things wrong but the only thing apparently engaging the attention of the government of Sindh is to reward bribery and corruption - “To vice industrious but to nobler deeds timorous and slothful”.
The dubious pleasure of the governor regulates our lives. A travesty has been trussed-up as a ‘law’ under his signature. The cumulative wisdom with which the people of Sindh have governed their lives has been dispatched to the rubbish bin. The KBCA, an opprobrious den of shame, flaunts and struts before the highest courts of the land, which till yesterday had held, that: “It is the bounden duty of the KBCA, if it is at all to implement its mandate, to ensure that no unauthorized construction, without a duly approved plan, comes up within the area of its jurisdiction. ... In short, the KBCA has to implement the law, which has created it. Nothing short of that would justify its existence” (Afzal Khan versus KDA, PLD 1998 Karachi 283).
There are hundreds of judgments given by the High Court and the Supreme Court which the government of Sindh now states are not binding on the corrupt. When governments failed to check the construction of illegal buildings the people sought legal redress. The superior Courts of Pakistan came to the rescue of the citizens and directed KBCA to implement the building laws. KBCA “cannot regularise a breach of the regulations” (Abdul Razzak versus KBCA, PLD 1994 Supreme Court 512).
“The regulations should be applied for the benefit of the public and not for favouring an individual” and “a public functionary which is entrusted with the work to achieve the objective of maximum comfort for the residents of the city cannot act in a manner, which may defeat this objective” (Ardeshir Cowasjee versus KBCA, PLJ 1999 Supreme Court 2331). “The entire population cannot be allowed to be put in danger for the benefit of a few builders” (Begum Saida Qazi Isa versus Quetta Municipal Corporation, PLD 1997 Quetta 1). “The paramount consideration should be public interest and public good” (KBCA versus Hashwani Sales & Services Limited, PLD 1993 Supreme Court 210).
But the government of Sindh is not accountable to anyone, and its actions confirm that it considers itself above the law. It has declared a war on the citizens and the courts. It favours illegal buildings and hopes to earn nickels from those who have looted the city’s silver to pay for the salaries of the 913 employees of KBCA. It copies the words found over the gates of Hell and inscribes them on the portals of our city:
Through me the way into the doleful city/Through me the way into eternal grief/Through me a people forsaken — Dante’s Inferno
FOR a long time President Bush resisted engaging in the Middle East, fearing that a high-profile diplomatic intervention might fail and therefore hurt his credibility. Then the president realized that, for a global superpower, not having a policy is itself a policy; standing back may sometimes harm your credibility even more than wading in and falling short.
Now the administration should grasp the same point on Afghanistan. There, the president has refused to back an international peacekeeping force that would extend beyond the capital, fearing that the peacekeepers might fail. As a result, Afghanistan risks a descent into chaos. The costs to Mr. Bush’s credibility may be bigger than he seems to realize.
Mr. Bush has stated that the United States will not abandon Afghanistan as it did after the Soviet withdrawal. He has invested his credibility in the success of the interim administration led by Hamid Karzai and in the longer-term reconstruction plans that the United States has helped to craft.
In two speeches last month, the president explained why stabilizing countries such as Afghanistan is profoundly in the national interest, citing the “failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and try to turn to their advantage.” In sum, Mr. Bush has staked his — and America’s — prestige on replacing the despotic Taliban regime with something better. If he cannot make good on this promise, he can hardly expect anyone to believe that he will succeed in replacing Saddam Hussein with a more palatable Iraqi government.
So far, however, it’s not clear that post-Taliban Afghanistan is headed to a better future. The process of electing a national assembly began last week, and Afghanistan’s exiled king has returned from Italy.
But the past two weeks have brought an assass