KARACHI, Jan 9: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has summoned all the records dealing with allotment of shops and auction sheds in the New Sabzi Mandi. The records pertain to the period from 2002 onwards.
The market committee of the Sabzi Mandi had been asked to furnish the documents, some sources told Dawn. They said the bureau was looking into the affairs of the Mandi, following persistent reports of corruption and mismanagement. It took charge of the situation with a view to assigning responsibility for the fiasco.
The project, financed by the Asian Development Bank, presents the picture of any other fruit or vegetable market, in the absence of a master plan. The market is devoid of parking facilities, due to unrestrained encroachment, and the roads are littered with putrid fruits and rotten vegetables for want of garbage dumps. Also, the over-flowing sewage system creates a very unhealthy environment.
In this way, not only is the model project being defaced but it also deprives the city government of millions of rupees, which are being generated in the form of entry fees and charges recovered from the stakeholders, the sources claimed.
The vested interests are so well entrenched that when the former food and agriculture minister Arif Jatoi resigned, one of the reasons cited was the mud slinging between people pulling the strings there.
The idea of their influence could be judged from the fact that when the former chief minister Sardar Ali Muhammad Mahar, on the recommendation of a special committee constituted by the chief secretary, decided to hand over the management of the market to the city government in accordance to the SLGO, its notification was blocked.
Soon all those, who were implicated in corruption in the Sindh Ombudsman's report, were brought back on one pretext or the other. Once again a mess was created, causing resentment among the genuine allottees.
The traders and growers also felt insecure over the opening of a passage from the compound wall of the Sabzi Mandi to the adjacent market built in private sector, which in recent past was closed after protests by the allottees due to cases of theft and violence.
The allottees pointed out that the arrangement of security was insufficient in the market where instead of 44 security guards, which were shown in the muster roll, only 14 guards were performing duties. Even these were untrained.
The cleanliness contract was granted to a private firm, which had only two tractors and a trolley and a total 16 staffers for a market spread over 94 acres. Due to the shortage of staff and machinery, no road is visible in block C-1 to C-6 and Block-D which were covered in one-foot-deep layer of rotten leaves and vegetables.
The sewage contract was given to another private party for Rs100,000 per month but the contractor's staff cannot be seen performing their duties. As a result, gutters are over-flowing at places and even rainwater is standing despite the passage of more than a week since the last rain.
The market committee, which had given the contract of recovering the entry fees of vehicles in the market area for Rs31 million per annum to a contractor, was showing a recovery of over Rs2.58 million per month but he was driven out. Now the recovery stands at under Rs75,000 per day while during the time of army supervision the amount collected on this account used to be over Rs100,000 per day.
