16 May 2004	Sunday	25 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

KARACHI: Ambreen and Imtiaz flew off to Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah this week. Imtiaz with a modest salary from a private job had been planning for the visit for long, but never managed to save enough. He made an extra Rs100,000 through his maiden investment in the stock market: like many others he bought shares in the state-run Oil and Gas Development Corporation and earned capital gains within two months.

Mrs. Hameeda Shamsuddin purchased a three-room apartment off University Road for Rs700,000 last month after disposing of a smaller apartment she owned for Rs400,000. Her husband who works in Dubai as a salesman sent her the remaining Rs300,000.

The two examples show how people are benefiting from booming stock market and substantial flows of remittances from overseas Pakistanis. Their income levels are rising.

But the question is: will this bring a significant change in overall living standards? Or will it inflate the asset price bubble that the increased liquidity in the economy has formed?

The market capitalization of the Karachi Stock Exchange has skyrocketed but this has happened primarily due to increase in stock prices. The number of listed companies has not risen proportionately. Investment in real estate and building industry has also risen manifold-thanks to speculative price flare-ups. But not many housing projects have come up.

This means that prices of housing units and plots of land have been on the rise primarily because cash-rich investors are out to make an investment. Thus, a majority of end users who are buying bungalows or plots of land are not essentially paying higher prices for equally high quality. The same applies -of course with exceptions-to rising prices of many other goods and services.

Small wonder then that the trickle-down effect of increased liquidity on the social sector has not been as important as it should have been. Says Mrs. Hameeda Shamsuddin: "We did buy a new flat but availability of water and electricity is still as big a problem as it was before." Her son Khurram adds angrily: "And look! what a nuisance this new electricity meter is. We are paying about Rs1,000 every month for a bare minimum use of electricity. We made several complaints to the KESC about the faulty meter but to no avail.

"Look at them. They are paying Rs1,000 as fixed electricity bill whereas they do have two/three ACs each," he says pointing to nearby bungalows. On inquiry, Dawn learnt that almost each bungalow is using an illegal power connection.

It does not take a genius to figure out why the KESC has failed to end what is called 'Kunda' culture even when it is headed by a military man. But the irony is that the KESC continues to make up for the loss it suffers due to power pilferage by extorting extra money from all consumers in the name of additional surcharge.

Supply of water too is a big one problem in most parts of Karachi. "I do not believe in suicide but sometime I think it is better to die then to live here," says a middle-aged woman as she pushes a cart laden with two 20-litre water barrels on the streets of Buffer Zone. Her eight-year-old daughter Momal tries to help her move the cart.

The three-room apartment this lady lives in was constructed without obtaining a legitimate water connection: the result is that the residents have to pay Rs300 monthly for getting drinking water supplied through water tankers once a week. "And whenever there is a water crisis we get it after every two weeks."

At such times people have to purchase water from enterprising bungalow owners-or get it free from those "not-so-enterprising" and bring it to their apartments in 20-litre water barrels exclusively kept for this purpose. Momal's father makes Rs5,000 per month from a private job and two of his daughters do fabric painting. "We make enough for our living but wandering on the streets in search of water bleeds my heart," says her mother, her eyes welling up.

This much for water.

Healthcare has always been a far cry for a majority of Karchiites. It still is. But for some unfortunate ones it is more than that- it's a nightmare.

Consider this. An elderly woman died in one of the largest private hospitals of Karachi in North Nazimabad a couple of years ago. At the time of her death, two of her sons were present and there was no female relatives around. When the sons were leaving with the body of their beloved mother, still clad in a hospital gown the receptionist asked them to pay Rs1,000 for the gown before they removed the body.

Shocked as they were, the bereaved sons said they would return to pay the money afterwards as they did not have that much cash on them. But the receptionist insisted they should pay immediately. That infuriated the attendants of other patients who had gathered at the scene.

"Believe me, If I had a gun I would have killed that receptionist," roared Syed Ashraf Raza Fatimi who was one of those present at the scene. "I had a heated exchange of words not only with the receptionist but with the senior management of the hospital to convince them that they cannot stop the sons from taking home their mother's body."

But the hospital management used the tested technique of quoting rules and finally some female relatives of the elderly women turned up with two bed sheets in which the deceased was wrapped and moved out of the hospital.

Fatimi, a Grade-II credit officer of Habib Bank Ltd, loses his temper whenever he recalls this incident.

Education. "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance," so says a former president of Harvard University Derek Bok.

This famous quote comes in handy for many in the private sector who run schools and colleges and charge very high fees. Though some of them do provide really good quality education, the majority of them are simply selling education as a commodity -and that too in a careless fashion.

Says Mrs. Sharfa Mohsin: "I had to visit may son's school thrice just to make a simple point - that is, that 40 is spelled as forty and not FOURTY."

Mrs. Mohsin who pays Rs750 in monthly tuition fee for her ward studying at a school located near Gulshan Chowrangi said "the mathematics teacher who insisted on the wrong spelling of 40 refused to correct herself even after having been reprimanded by the principal."

She says she once pointed out seven different mistakes in the annual Urdu paper of Class VIII. The result: she was offered a job at the same school which she refused to take up. The reason: the salary offered was Rs1200.

The school in question offers Rs1,200 to Rs2,000 a month to its teaching staff, the amount being equal to what the school gets in fees from two or three children.

Mrs Mohsin is also among those who have recently seen a rise in their income levels as the economy is coming out of the woods. She gives tuition in evenings and works as sales executive in a private company during the day.

But the dilemma of the Mohsins and others is that their increased income is not enough to buy them the quality of social services they need - be it water or sanitation, healthcare or education.