| February 19, 2006 | Sunday | Muharram 20, 1427 |
A dreadful week
Of course it is welcome news that that there is going to be a mechanized sweeping of the major roads in Karachi. It seems that at this stage 28 such large roads have been selected. The residents and citizens who stand to benefit from this have ample reasons to be very elated. This step reflects the effort, and the vision to keep the city clean.
But there is, evidently, another side to these mechanized sweepers. As they can be used on bigger, wider roads and have technical, physical limitations, residents who dwell in the backward areas ,where the streets are narrow and where the roads are broken and in various stages of disrepair, are wondering about the cleaning of their roads. What is the future of the smaller, roads, generally speaking when will their turn come?
The purpose of saying this is not to overlook the positive side of the story for it is after almost five decades that this mechanized sweeping and washing of roads is being initiated. These sweepers are called Marathon Mechanical Sweepers (MMS), the city has 30 of them, and each one requires one person to operate it, and it does the work of 60-80 persons.
Without the slightest doubt the issue of environment, with reference to that of garbage and its disposal in the developed as well as the backward areas of the Sindh capital is a major one and of deeper significance than what is commonly perceived. Interestingly, at this time there is also being focused upon another aspect of making Karachi a clean city. This relates to the decision of the city government to privatize the lifting of garbage and the disposal system, with a view to lifting promptly about 7,000 tons of garbage that Karachi generates daily.
Now this decision is being opposed by the workers and employees at a meeting expressed their reservations and concerns regarding service rules and facilities and feared that contractors would not provide them similar working conditions and facilities.
The speakers at the meeting said that they were in contact with their legal advisors, and if the concerns of the workers were not addressed, there could be other means like strikes, for which the administration would be held responsible.
City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal has defended this privatization and while speaking at the inauguration of this privatization at the Gadap Town last week, explained that under the new system there was going to be a door to door system of garbage lifting. He emphasized that the present capacity of the civic department was to lift 4,000 tons of garbage.
This means that about 3,000 tons of garbage accumulates on the roads and streets of Karachi, giving us a messy stinking image of the city, which we all are familiar with.
The city nazim is quoted as saying, “Today the city’s cleanliness is being started in a new manner. For the first time in Karachi, all towns have signed an agreement and now private companies will lift garbage.”
Karachiites have been promised that they will be able to see a positive change in the next few weeks. If this happens, it would be something that Karachiites can only dream of. So one waits to see what will unfold in the days to come.
So one waits to see how the new arrangement will be implemented. It is imperative to mention here that several new systems at varying stages being introduced in the city, in some instances are creating worries and even anxiety among the people.
One such example is that of the traffic diversion plans for public transport (especially buses) that presently plies on the I.I. Chundrigar Road. If it wasn’t for the protest rallies that have been taking place in the city for the last several days, this would have been introduced. Presently, it has been postponed.
The new plan envisages that public transport will be diverted to roads and streets adjoining the I.I. Chundrigar road. This means that those who have to go to offices on this road will be terribly inconvenienced.
There is also the apprehension that the streets and roads adjoining the main artery of I.I. Chundrigar Road will be clogged and even paralyzed .What will happen when all those buses that a road like I.I. Chundrigar cannot take, are diverted to other narrow options.
To many of us it appears that the I.I. Chundrigar Road is being converted into an elitist road, which will gradually only have private vehicles, and with all these new cars coming onto the city roads, it will give a rather posh appearance to the dual carriage. What the ordinary people are supposed to do is anybody’s guess.
Indeed, it is all a manifestation of the steady manner in which the city’s roads are becoming smaller, with time. The roads are becoming smaller because the number of private cars is growing, because public transport is proving hopelessly insufficient. And one sad aspect of this is that to accommodate the growing number of vehicles there is a possibility that the Jehangir Park will be lost to the idea of a parking lot.
This reminds me that the Bagh-i-Jinnah car parking space, on the Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road, has already been lost to the general public it is now a parking lot for the office goers who work in and around the PIDC house.
I have focused in a way, on the streets of Karachi, whether it relates to the traffic aspect or cleanliness, or to issues like traffic diversions. I do not need to over emphasize the fact that so many VIP roads already stand closed because of security concerns of foreign missions and government functionaries.
And this outgoing week there were closures in numerous parts of the city because of the protest rallies that were taken out. The amazing thing, which was also such a relief, was that on Thursday, with that mammoth rally on the roads, it was absolutely peaceful, and dignified. See the comparison to Lahore a day earlier, which was stunned by what happened on its famous streets. But that’s another subject.
THIS past week has been a living nightmare for the city, what with the mindless rioting and extensive damage caused to public and private property. No, this was not a matter of faith; it was its nemesis. The faithful, they keep saying, do not go on a rampage against their own brethren. Least of all to supposedly punish an offender who watches them on a TV screen, looting and burning their own city, from the safety of his home thousands of miles away. The images coming out of Lahore and beamed across the world must have only reinforced the Islam-phobic mindset the West has nurtured since 9/11. Lahore, too, has now secured its place on that world map scaled by xenophobia.
Confusion abounds as to who should shoulder the responsibility for the three dead and the massive destruction whose cost runs into millions, that is without counting the emotional cost and the loss of life involved. The organisers of the protest blamed the government for not giving the rally the security cover that was given, for instance, to the marathon last month, or to the Ashura procession just a week ago; the government squarely put the blame on the organisers for the chaos.
Traders along The Mall, Egerton-Davis Road areas are right in demanding compensation from the government whose negligence let utter lawlessness prevail in the street last Tuesday and Wednesday. It is shocking beyond belief as to why the government did not ready its law enforcement agencies to deal with the possibility of violence breaking out; especially so when angry men had been going around town in vans fitted with megaphones, making aggressive announcements since the previous evening, vowing to avenge the insult they believed the blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet of Islam published in European newspapers had hurled on Muslims everywhere.
But let’s not forget the fact that many seen involved in the looting and hooliganism were not the stereotypical bearded men that you associated with seminaries or mosques. There were a good number of jeans-clad young men, some in plain, regular shalwar-qameez. The only thing common among them was they went around brandishing sticks and iron rods, which many put to the use they were meaning to. Others were seen looting shops and making away with merchandise by the carton. Some youngsters also carried firearms, especially those demonstrating inside the Punjab University on Wednesday. Were these scenes from a troubled Baghdad neighbourhood, you wondered.
The city nazim and the chief minister, both, cut a sorry figure when they appeared on TV and announced that the situation was under control and there was no cause for worry after all the damage had been done. They could have at least been a bit more sensitive to the feelings of the mothers who had lost their sons in the rioting; and of those who lost their everything to hooliganism and looting that accompanied the protest.
Surely, a number of arrests have been made, with the government claiming that those booked were seen in the TV footage causing damage to property or inciting fellow protesters to violence. If true, then in the presence of such irrefutable proof, it would be a shame to let such culprits walk free on any pretext; there should be no political deals struck and all involved in violence and looting must be brought to justice in a swift and transparent manner.
This was one big city in the country that prided itself on being a safe and secure place, attracting a record number of visitors every year, including foreigners, despite all the bad press and travel advisories sent out by western governments, warning against travel to Pakistan. At the time the riots erupted on Tuesday, there were reportedly hundreds of Indians in the city, visitors who had come to watch the Pakistan-India one-day match. Most were holed up in their hotel rooms all day, and took back with them memories of a trip they wished they did not take. A news report suggests that on an average some 14,000 commuters travel back and forth between Lahore and India on a monthly basis; add to this the number of other visitors, and it accounts for a good measure of the economic activity you see in the shopping malls and in restaurants.
Foreign investment, too, was forthcoming in the last few years. After this past week’s show of lawlessness, in which offices were ransacked, banks were looted, multinational food chain outlets and telecommunication companies were gutted and vandalised, one need not wonder what kind of message has been sent to both the existing and potential investors.
Big corporate entities and multinational companies have reportedly rolled back their programmes for Basant. Ask the ordinary, stunned citizen if he would like to partake in kite-flying, for which the entire city so painstakingly managed to secure a stipulated 15-day exemption period from the Supreme Court. First it was two city-bound trains that derailed within a week and then came the riots; it is very unlikely that Lahore would attract even half the number of customary visitors on Basant that it did in the previous years. Whose fault is it all? You may ask that question again and again but without hoping for a straightforward answer.
Well, here’s food for thought: the rampant commercialisation undertaken by the city authorities in the recent past has also seen garbage collection and disposal farmed out to private parties, which are apparently doing a good job. Isn’t it time someone thought of outsourcing the maintenance of law and order too? If that should work just as well, the next logical step should be to farm out governance, you would imagine, in all good faith, of course.
There has not been a word of sympathy from those ruling the roost that has gone out to the overwhelming majority of the peaceful and fun-loving Lahoris. The city has been scarred and it needs nursing back to normalcy in all physical, mental and emotional terms. The least the authorities concerned could have done was to apologise for their initial failure to maintain peace and order. If this had happened in any other big city elsewhere, the mayor and the chief executive would have lost their sleep — if not their — over how to explain what had hit their city.
None of that here, well, not anymore. This is because we are now condemned to live within the confines of a system that only propels those to the top that have no heart and little conscience; even if they do, they are certainly incapable of showing it. — OBSERVER