| May 15, 2005 | Sunday | Rabi-us-Sani 6, 1426 |
The days of free car parking are over!
HAS the city of Karachi forgotten about the charged parking issue? For all the issues that get raised in the media and particularly in the letters to the editor columns of local and national dailies is there no one who has any views on this subject? After all parking is a problem that is faced by the city daily, almost round-the-clock? Even super markets have begun to realize the commercial value of having free valet parking for their customers.
THIS has definitely been a week marked by imposition and, in some cases, the lifting of bans. Just like the Urdu word ‘safar’ (travel) in a Third World country like ours often also means having to suffer, a ban, too, has the potential of becoming a bane.
The city government in its belated wisdom lifted the ban imposed last week on rickshaws using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as fuel. The ban was imposed following the unfortunate blasts caused by LPG cylinder bursts in Allama Iqbal Town that had left 29 people dead. An estimated 90 per cent of Lahore’s 54,000 or so rickshaws run on LPG.
The decision to impose the ban, obviously, was taken in haste, with the government fearing a public outcry over the tragic loss of life in Iqbal Town. But in doing so, it forgot that it was the unsafe practice of refilling gas cylinders that had resulted in the death of so many people and not because the use of LPG as fuel was itself hazardous. The rickshaw drivers’ association challenged the ban in court, which ruled that the restriction was illegal.
Meanwhile, the majority of rickshaw drivers and commuters had a tough week. LPG prices went skyrocketing after the ban, and it sold for twice its worth in the black market. Add to it the additional cost of keeping the rickshaw running without being booked for violating the ban, and you had a commuter nightmare. In a city that has very few taxis, simply because taxis have long become an unaffordable mode of transport, rickshaws, too, joined the league.
For a day or two after the Lahore High Court injunction, the city government simply ignored the court’s orders and continued its crackdown on rickshaws. This led a number of rickshaw drivers to set their vehicles on fire in protest; but nothing doing. Then came the government’s moment of reckoning: thousands of rickshaws jampacked and blocked Lytton Road, the city’s rickshaw market and the main artery from Old Anarkali into Mozang Chungi. The protesters refused to budge until the city nazim was prevailed upon to announce an unconditional lifting of the ban.
There was absolutely no need for things to have gone that far. The city government’s argument that the Punjab government planned to ban two-stroke vehicles in Lahore by the end of the year anyway held no water, because the alternative, four-stroke rickshaws, have yet to see the light of day. Interest-free bank loans promised to facilitate existing drivers to buy the new rickshaws will not be available until after the passage of next year’s budget. The whole thing just went to show how inept the city government is in its grasp of the issue at hand.
Now that the ban has been lifted under pressure from rickshaw drivers, there is still no clear policy to ensure that LPG cylinders will not be filled using substandard equipment and unsafe procedures. You may also ask as to where in this congested and expanding city are the so-called licensed LPG filling stations.
Such facilities by and large remain unregistered and, therefore, unregulated. For all practical purposes, the danger that these rickety filling stations pose to public life is not over, but the city government’s tryst with the issue certainly seems to be.
ANOTHER much publicized ban that was openly flouted was imposed by the Punjab University syndicate on the holding of a book fair by a student wing of a religious party. The university administration called in the police and tried to enforce the ban but failed miserably when thousands of students, and publishers, turned up at the New Campus to savour the planned three-day book fair.
The event was held without trouble, and while book lovers got what they came looking for, the religious party in question had yet another chance to reassert its territorial claim on the university. It is said that the police were ordered to clear the way for the book fair just in the nick of time before the huge crowds turned up. Who sounded the all important, ‘all clear’ bell, has remained a mystery.
Here again, the problem was that of decision making. To give the devil its due, organizing a book fair at an educational institution is a positive co-curricular and even academic activity as opposed to a political one, as was claimed to be the case by the organizers. By first banning the event in a pigheaded manner and then allowing it to take place under pressure has only brought a bad name to the university syndicate.
The latest showdown between the university administration and the student body in question was but another example of the rotten state of affairs at the country’s higher seats of learning. The lesson to be learnt is that if you ban representative, regular union activities on campus, pressure groups and obscurant forces which belong on the fringes of society, take on the main stage and start bulldozing their narrow-minded agenda through threats and intimidation. But this is one lesson that neither the government nor the university administration seems willing to learn anytime soon. It is tragic.
A MINI-MARATHON planned to be held from the Qadhafi Stadium to the Garden Town roundabout by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan was thwarted on Saturday. The city government is said to have become jittery over the holding of mixed-gender marathons ever since the one in Gujranwala was attacked by religious zealots.
However, that was not the reason cited by the nazim, who said that (the infamous) Section 144 remained in force in the city and a gathering of more than five people at any point cannot be allowed. The other reason given was that the police had refused to give the run a clean security chit. The controversy surrounding the whole issue took a new turn when the area police in charge was quoted as saying that the city government had not informed the police of any such run talking place. The organizers of the event at the HRCP were burnt up at the government’s refusal to grant permission for the mini-marathon which, according to one of them, was a practice worthy of being publicized as Gen Musharraf’s ‘enlightened moderation’ in action. The intended pun was not lost on the city government, hence the refusal. It is funny how an event entailing men and women running in the street has acquired a new semiotic meaning, thanks to the religious right making an issue out of the whole thing. Remember the time when dancing in a public place was militated against to the silly point where the Benazir government had to ban Nazia and Zoheb singing and swinging even in a TV studio?
Singing and dancing were against our cultural norms then, just as running in the street is now. Beating up women in the street has never been out of the norm. That was done back in Gen Zia’s time, and we saw a repeat performance again on Saturday afternoon. The French have a point when they say ‘the more it changes, the more it remains the same’.
FRIDAY saw the MMA-wallahs, led mostly by the Jamaat-i-Islami, take out several rallies after the midday prayer in many parts of the city to denounce the reported desecration of the Quran by American soldiers at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Bloody protests over the issue in neighbouring Afghanistan have led to deaths and attacks on property, including the ransacking of the Pakistan consulate in Jalalabad.
A friend who saw the entire congregation in Anarkali, of which he was a part, transform into a rally, swore by his life that the congregation was not made up of five men. So what happens to the ubiquitous Section 144 when it’s time for the clerics to take to the streets? — Observer
We had charged parking, and ostensibly because of the fact that the city district government couldn’t manage it and public opinion continued to advocate that car parking should be free, the system didn’t work. It was made to fail, but there were indications that it would be decided by a committee whether charged parking should be sustained by the way cantonment areas in town still have charged parking. There is no hassle and harassment and it is relatively much easier to find car parking space there.
I am revisiting this subject which it appears has been forgotten in the plethora of problems that we have around us. In particular, I would like to mention one senior citizen of Karachi, who has been insisting us to raise voices for restoration of charged parking system. His place of business is near Zebunnisa Street and he complains that shopkeepers and others who work in such commercial areas as Saddar park their vehicles for free throughout the day. So customers, that is the public, have no parking space available when the business hours begin. This reflects the larger frustration of shrinking space as the number of private and public vehicles multiply needs to be kept in mind all the time.
The senior citizen has seen Karachi since Independence. Those who have experienced the relative calm and comforts of Karachi in its initial days find the city now a source of nightmares, humiliation and paralysis. In fact, sometimes one feels that there are people out to ensure that the problems don’t get solved. One cannot understand for example neglected open manhole covers on roads, the risks to vehicles and pedestrians notwithstanding. What happens in Saddar or Zebunnisa Street and adjoining areas is possibly happening in several other places. Take the PIDC area or Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road when there was charged parking there was evident a sanity and discipline. But there were some vehicle owners, expensive ones, who would grumble and groan that they were being charged for parking. They would demand the moon for the Rs10 or Rs20 they paid, and they found faults with the system. Instead of wanting and seeking to improve the system, they wanted to scrap it. There were plus points and there were negative points too. But, unfortunately charged parking came to an end.
Now what happens here in the high security PIDC House vicinity (two five star hotels and the Chief Minister’s House) is that cars are parked without security and any system, and those who do so frequently complain of thefts from their vehicles. Others park at Rs70 a day at the Karachi Sheraton! Some have stopped bringing their cars and have adopted other options. Individual tales of enormous inconvenience and theft are often heard. Yet strangely, nine out of 10 people do not openly advocate charged parking. Interestingly, the city government or the town nazim here have not denied parking facilities at the large parking lot outside the Bagh-i-Jinnah.
One Karachiite who has just bought a new car on auto loan is one of the few who do speak out in defence of charged parking. As long as he had an old car he wasn’t really bothered of where and how he parked, but now that he has a new car he is visibly cautious. What disappoints is that as a city the need for charged parking seems to have been sidelined, or given a low priority, or even buried. If that is true it is sad! Look at the way cars are haphazardly and incorrectly parked (double parking included) on Abdullah Haroon Road, Tariq Road, Zebunnisa Street, the many roads and streets of Saddar or I.I. Chundrigar Road (or off it) will provide a glimpse of what this city lacks. To lament and mourn that even the new and modern buildings have virtually no parking for their residents is to restate the obvious. Violations of building laws and regulations, and environmental considerations have little worth in most cases. The change that is promised is coming too slow, and public irritation, impatience and anger are rising. Have you not witnessed the rudeness of drivers and the willingness to hurl threat and abuse over traffic issues like parking. In summer, the heat alone is an aggravating factor.
I have read with interest a news report which says that Sindh Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui was dissatisfied with the existing traffic arrangements and management in the city, and he described it as “deplorable”. He apparently paid a surprise visit “to many of the busiest areas of the city, and was dissatisfied with the traffic congestion on the busiest roads and streets”. (Surely, one major cause of this must have been the chaotic parking patterns). The report said that the provincial minister reviewed the entire traffic flow on the commercialized roads like Sharea Pakistan, Rashid Minhas Road, Five Star chowrangi, and Jehangir Road, to name a few. It has been indicated that he issued directives to complete road repairs, and expedite construction work which were among the causes of traffic congestion in Karachi.
Official concern about traffic mismanagement, flow and the resultant chaos is often heard. Official release of data and impressive statistics of new cars and buses coming on the city’s roads are in abundance. Official assurances that plans were underway to sort things out were common, and trumpeted on media, observed one motorist. He was, however, amazed that no one advocated the need to have charged parking back. A small cost for parking cars, and two wheelers or whatever, would in addition to making parking space available, generate revenue for the city government, and provide employment to hundreds of people. And mind you, not all of the men who worked in the charged parking programme were either shirkers or dishonest. Black sheep exist everywhere and they need to be targeted and sorted out. That is what should have been done instead of bringing to an end a system that exists the world over. Even here, if there is free valet parking there are other places where motorists do pay for the parking and the attendant services. Users’ charges is a common concept and practice now. Karachiites need to face the reality that parking space will always remain in scarcity here, it is the best way to have a disciplined system introduced, which in the long run is bound to pay dividends. It is a matter of getting used to it. One should realize that the days of free parking space are no more!! And with women drivers growing in number, the need to have a respectable system in place for this current madness is essential.
One private car owner made an interesting comment on this subject, “A person is willing to pay Rs100,000-Rs200,000 as premium on a new car acquired on a lease. Yet he is not willing to pay car parking charges, which bring security and safety besides a peace of mind. Isn’t that odd…strange?”
All in all, one does wonder what the city district government has done about the charged parking scheme that it brought to an end. Karachiites do need to know, and want to know. Now that the local government elections are due in about two months, it may not be a politically correct time for it to even touch the issue. So, I guess we will have to wait. It could be a long wait, is what some of us fear!