| September 01, 2008 | Monday | Sha'aban 29, 1429 |
Apathy of KBCA & CDGK
Putting housing on the right track
Karachi should have a committee for improving the aesthetics of the city, among the myriads of other redundant committees. We are a city expanding exponentially with every passing day.
Hideous concrete structures keep mushrooming everywhere while there’s absolutely no regard for any aesthetic value whatsoever. The builders build whatever fancies their whims even if it looks thoroughly unappealing.
What’s more is that even if they do manage to construct a decent building, they fail to maintain it. Apartment complexes all over the city can be seen with mismatched window glasses, balcony grills in tens of different designs and styles, exteriors painted to suit individual tastes … in short every flat is an individual unit on its own.
They may be very beautiful, but these practices wreak havoc with how a building looks. Individual tastes should be limited to within one’s own four walls.
Even while driving on the city’s roads one risks damaging one’s aesthetic sensibilities.
One roundabout sponsored by a toothpaste company has a giant toothpaste tube with paste dripping out of it. Another roundabout has an unfinished boat structure on it for quite some time. I was told recently that it is supposed to be just that: an unfinished boat. How creative!
Talking of ugly structures, has anyone seen those wooden or ceramic pieces installed at the turning on Karsaz Road coming from the National Stadium? Any guesses for what they are? They might look very nice if installed at some relevant place but at the moment they look like they’ve been dumped by a bored owner.
Some very nice sculptures were installed on Seaview a while back but news of them being damaged and stolen came shortly after. Even if some good thing comes our way, we simply do not seem to tolerate it.
If it is not hideous structures, just look at some of those totally unappealing and at times outright obscene advertisements.
There was a fruit drink ad all over the city which wasn’t quite in good taste and there was a lot of public outcry. Thankfully the brand concerned took notice and has changed it.
With the city limits being stretched every day and hideous structures cropping up to accommodate the ever-increasing population, we seriously need some action to stop the city from turning into an ugly concrete jungle or otherwise shut our eyes and mind our own business.
—Tooba Asim
Reckless drivers
It has invariably been observed in the city’s posh areas that when school ends boys — and in some cases girls also — have the tendency to tell their drivers waiting to pick them up in their cars to step aside and vacate the driving seat so that they themselves can drive back home.
In most cases the hapless drivers have no choice but to yield the wheel to their little masters or mistresses.
Mind you I am not a killjoy and can realize the excitement and rush of adrenalin when these youngsters take to the wheel, but everything has to have its limits.
It seems it has become fashionable and chic to drive at breakneck speeds flouting traffic laws.
There is a kilometre long stretch along the Seaview beach designated as Devil’s Point leading up to a bowling club where every weekend on Saturdays, just a year or two ago car racing was held unlawfully.
Young enthusiasts, taking a leaf or in this case a whole chapter from the movie The Fast and the Furious, went wild in joyride sprees.
The latest trend in cars is the installation of what I am told are nitro-oxide cylinders — an innovative turbo-charger which, within a few seconds, makes cars surge to a minimum speed of 100km per hour.
This kit, believe it or not, costs more than Rs80,000 and is selling like hotcakes. Also, there are display centres and workshops in the city where cars undergo a thorough modification.
Another innovative feature in the super-fast cars is the installation of a flame-thrower kit, which makes the car emit sparks through the silencer when racing at high speeds (like Batman’s Batmobile).
The rich of society can afford such luxuries while the hapless poor fall victim to their whims.
The police in this case are powerless as any action on their part will be meaningless for the kids belong to well-connected families. Signboards cautioning drivers that ‘Speed thrills but kills’ seem to have little or no effect on these zealous drivers.
There have been reports of fatal accidents also and moreover on Saturday nights, there have been incidents of drunk driving where innocent people have been killed and the culprits went off scot free.
This tragically reminds me of my late colleague Ian Fyfe, who died in a similar manner, the victim of rash and reckless driving.
The onus falls on parents to instil in their children responsibility, compassion and care, for money may buy everything in life, except life itself. —Syed Ali Anwer
Compiled by Syed Hassan Ali
karachian@dawn.com
Sir,
Bangalore Cooperative Housing Society, one of the priciest, well-planned residential areas of Karachi, inhabited by mostly disciplined residents, is fast losing its aesthetic beauty to a few ill-disciplined, inconsiderate residents.
The source of heartburn are perpetrators who have violated building rules and laws blatantly, needless to say, in connivance with the KBCA, and built garages and guardrooms on footpaths, encroached on compulsory open space within their four walls and have even installed mobile signal towers in their houses.
The management of Bangalore Cooperative Housing Society made every effort to get the KBCA and the city government to remove the violations. However, apart from lip service, nothing was achieved. Failing to get the KBCA and CDGK to do their duty, the society approached the ombudsman.
Till date, the KBCA and city government are artfully dodging the ombudsman’s orders.
The functioning of the KBCA is legendary. What hurts is that the much-trumpeted city district government does not believe in doing anything in an area where they feel their party objectives are not being met.
M. FAIYAZ AHMED
Bangalore Town
SSGC’s point of view
Sir,
SSGC would like to set the record straight regarding the criticism directed at the company in the news item that appeared in your esteemed daily on Aug 26, 2008 (page 18) entitled ‘Discrepancies detected in SSGC system.’ In the interest of protecting the image of the company it is imperative that facts are brought to light for information of the readers.
Before SSGC embarked on its strategic IT programme, a comprehensive study was carried out by an external consultant who provided the company with a roadmap and set the course for action. Before implementation of the programme it was presented to the board of directors for approval. Further, a detailed post-implementation study was conducted once again by an external consultant to verify the programme’s viability as well as its benefits to the end-user.
The external consultants have observed that the systems under study were arguably the need of an organization like SSGC that operates on a large scale and caters to the requirements of numerous stakeholders.
SSGC is the first company in Pakistan to successfully deploy technology-enabled transformation of business processes. Contrary to what has been implied in the article under reference, the focus of the management has been on in-house implementation in the interest of saving millions of rupees in consulting assistance. Training is imparted to key members of both the IT and user departments with the ‘Train the Trainer’ concept in mind.
The training is specifically tailored to SSGC’s specific needs and has yielded excellent results – we have successfully implemented our projects without the help of consultants. As a result of this strategy, a number of companies at the domestic and international levels are requesting for the use of our IT and business resources for implementation of their projects. The IT-enabled billing system through the Customer Information System (CIS) has been instrumental in recording the lowest ever unaccounted for gas. People are very carefully selected to be sent for any training, locally or internationally. Each one has a proven track record and solid delivery on a project. General manager (telecoms), who has proceeded abroad for training, has rich hands-on experience in the field of SCADA and is in the process of implementing a very important project for the company, which cannot be abandoned for junior people to handle.
SSGC is simply making use of the rich experience of very able professionals and subject matter experts. Both trainings mentioned (USA and Malaysia) are at the vendor’s expense.
S. NASREEN HUSSAIN
Dy General Manager
Corporate Communications
VVIP ordeal
Sir,
Though the ‘very, very important personalities’ do not squander any opportunity to make their presence felt whenever they give a ‘glimpse’ to the general public on the roads across our country, the unique experience we faced in this regard in Karachi the other day was exceedingly tormenting.
Travelling in the evening from the Civic Centre towards a hospital on Stadium Road to attend to a patient suffering from a fatal disease I, along with my family, was stunned to see the traffic police, all of a sudden, blocking the road near the National Stadium leading to the hospital as we were passing, arguing that there is a VVIP movement.
The road remained closed for about 10 minutes, indeed a big period for us while considering the highly serious nature of the patient we were going to visit.
While our request to the traffic police personnel and their on-the-spot in-charge was tactfully neglected, we were not the only victims as a big number of vehicles had massed behind us.
There are at least three nearby hospitals on the busy road where this unexpected blockade took place. Therefore, many patients, their relatives and visitors must have faced a major trauma during those troublesome 10 minutes.
Apparently, the International Cricket Council task force members and other officials were to visit the National Stadium, which was why the road was blocked.
One strongly feels that a logical solution could be to redirect the traffic coming towards that point right from the Civic Centre towards the Old Sabzi Mandi so that at least the patients and visitors could be saved from the unjustifiable blockade.
The authorities concerned must look into this traffic management flaw seriously on a highly urgent basis so that the VVIP movement is handled while not compromising the basic interest of thousands of common people.
S.M. IBRAHIM FAROOQI
Karachi
city@dawn.com
IN a three-level house on a 12-marlas plot in one residential sector of Islamabad bordering Rawalpindi, there are five families living, all of whom are tenants.
A couple and child live in the basement. A couple with seven children live on the first floor. Another couple without children live on the ground floor but the latter has sub-letted two of their rooms to two other couples, although this practice is illegal, thus bringing the total number of people living in the house to 18.
Four of the five families have cars but since the porch is only big enough for one car, at the most two cars if the gate is left opened, two other cars at least have to be parked outside, thus clogging up the street.
Just imagine this same scene in most of the houses on one street and in most of the streets of one sector, and one can get a pretty good idea of the kind of pressure on housing, and on utilities like electricity and water supply, in not a few sectors of Islamabad.
Since its establishment in 1960, Islamabad has prided itself in being a well-planned capital city but with the passage of time, the pace of housing development has not been able to keep up with the natural growth in population and the growing influx of people into the city.
The result is not only increasing overcrowding in existing residential sectors but also the spontaneous sprouting of untidy colonies of katchi abadis in the urban areas and lower-income housing in rural localities like Bhara Kahu, Lehtrar, etc.
The responsibility for this lies as much with CDA, which is responsible for securing and acquiring land and opening up sectors for both private and public residential development in Islamabad, as with the Ministry of Housing and Works, which is responsible for drawing up and implementing action plans on public home ownership in the country, including in Islamabad.
Despite the formulation of at least two national housing policies (in 1992 and 2001), the announcement of several grandiose housing schemes (one of which was Islamabad-specific), and the establishment of several housing organisations under the Ministry of Housing and Works to develop public housing for the people (viz., the National Housing Authority, the Prime Minister’s Housing Authority which later became the Pakistan Housing Authority, the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation and more recently, the Housing Advisory Board to advise on the implementation of the 2001 national housing policy), the net result is still a critical national housing backlog running into millions of housing units.
In Islamabad, residential sectors like D-12, E-12, G-13 and G-14 (all under the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation), have been very slow to develop despite being launched some time ago. D-12, for instance, was launched 18 years ago but the sector today remains undeveloped because of apparent lingering land acquisition problems.
Recently, the CDA announced the launching of three more new residential sectors, D-13, E-13 and F-13. What use will these new sectors be if they were also to remain undeveloped for umpteenth years because of one reason or the other?
Private housing societies like DHA Islamabad and Bahria Town in Rawalpindi have in recent years helped to ease a little the housing pressure but people generally, especially the middle and lower-income families, have found difficulty getting quality yet affordable accommodation.
A major stumbling block in housing development in Islamabad seems to have been the lack of coordination and cooperation between the CDA and the Ministry of Housing. To deliver more effectively on housing in the Islamabad area, it might be necessary to consider restructuring the responsibility of public housing development in the federal capital, making this a local responsibility under a local authority.
Recently, a successful public housing development authority in a city in Southeast Asia won the United Nations Public Service Award, one of the most prestigious international awards for excellence in public service. The success of this housing development authority, which incidentally also started its work in 1960, is due to three important fundamentals.
Firstly, the concept of a sole agency in charge of public housing enabled more effective resource planning and allocation, making it possible for the authority to secure land, raw materials and manpower for large-scale construction to optimise results and achieve economies of scale.
Secondly, the adoption of a total approach to housing, from planning and design to land assembly and construction, and through allocation, management and maintenance, enabled the housing development authority to view its housing task as a seamless whole.
Thirdly, strong government support in the form of political and financial commitment, as well as legislation in the form of a Land Acquisition Act and sensitive resettlement policies, helped put this Southeast Asian city’s public housing programme on the right track from the very beginning.
When can Islamabad hope to put its housing programme on the right track?
