KARACHI: An urban planner on Saturday said that the lack of the middle class was a big problem that faced the country’s mushrooming urbanisation and was hugely impeding good governance.

“The problem of urbanisation in Pakistan is lack of the middle class, who could ably govern,” said Arif Hasan, a renowned architect and head of the Urban Resource Centre (URC) while speaking at fast urbanisation and its impact on ecology at a media workshop.

Journalists from eight districts of Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas divisions gathered at the workshop titled ‘Understanding citizenship development and livelihoods in Sindh’ jointly organised by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) on the latter’s premises.

“The situation is such that we see more doctors but fewer paramedics; there are more engineers but a small number of mechanics; there are more architects but fewer technicians. We are living upside down, actually,” said Mr Hasan.

“We do not have maps and policies to decide keeping in mind the impacts of such a situation on environment and ecology. It happens because we do not have institutions to conduct surveys and do planning prior to initiating projects.”

He said communication system in urban areas was not viable. There were no bus stops, or workshops; no bus terminals, no rickshaw stands.

He said poor governance, a key issue, was also because of lack of vision. He said every project should be in the interest of the majority of the people; the land utilisation should be based on ecological safety; the cultural heritage of the communities should not be destroyed by a project,” he said.

Mr Hasan said lack of institutions in Sindh hampered the development of the province, which would further increase the influx of the population from rural and urban areas.

“Being active citizens it is responsibility of journalists to be eye and ear of common citizens and write constantly for protecting the interests of rural people,” Arif Hasan said. Journalists associated with different media houses and covering the topics ranging from ecology and drinking water to poverty, politics, crime and disasters from smaller towns are attending the workshop.

Arif Hasan said the first census of Pakistan in 1947 showed the population was 30 million which increased by 600 per cent in the country. Urban population at that time was 17 million which increased to about 90 million.

“It is happening because there is influx of population from rural to urban areas. If we see Karachi, there is wider difference in old and new migrants. The people migrated earlier luckily got pieces of lands for shelter in katchi abadis and lived safer. But now the land is no more left and land prices have increased so new entrants do not have money for purchasing land. But despite that people’s influx in urban areas would increase,” he said.

Dr Riaz Shaikh of the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology gave presentation on development in Sindh, saying that the province contributed 70pc to the revenue of the country, but in return there were lack of initiatives for social development in the province. He quoted the recent social development reports that indicated Tando Mohammed Khan and Tharparkar districts were the least developed ones. He advised the media persons to take those issues effectively.

Iqbal Detho of the Save the Children Fund; Piler’s Zulfiqar Shah; Khurshid Abbasi, secretary general of the PFUJ, Zeenia Shaukat, Nighat Sattar, Ishaq Mangrio and Shujauddin Qureshi facilitated the sessions.