THE sprawling metropolis of Karachi — home to over 20 million people and three million registered vehicles, all spewing carbon dioxide into the air — is slowly being choked of oxygen.

On Wednesday night, over a dozen 20-year-old trees were chopped down on one of its main thoroughfares.

Although it has yet to be determined who committed the act and to what end, the felling of tens of thousands of trees — the ‘lungs of a city’ — all over Karachi in the past few years is indicative of the authorities’ reckless disregard for the environment and the residents’ quality of life.

Almost always, the impetus for the decimation of tree cover is to create space for commercial billboards multiplying like a virus on the streets.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the authorities concerned to remove within 15 days all signage installed without permission on public spaces and properties.

The three-member bench stipulated June 30 as the deadline for removal of billboards put up under any licence or lease on the aforementioned areas.

Moreover, it banned any authority from granting permission for installing billboards on any public space or property in Karachi in the intervening period, during which it ordered that amendments to relevant by-laws be finalised to safeguard citizens’ rights.

This is not the first time the courts have taken note of an issue that has reduced parts of the city to an unsightly patchwork of commercial imagery which not only offends aesthetics but violates people’s right to a safe environment.

After some fatalities were caused by falling billboards a few years ago, the authorities did institute some precautionary measures, but that is all. Multiple billboards create visual clutter and pose a serious traffic hazard while hoardings on pavements are an impediment to pedestrians.

Larger ones not only sometimes obstruct vision, they also cast shadows even on well-lit thoroughfares, thereby posing a risk to both drivers and pedestrians.

The courts’ directives have been repeatedly ignored because of sheer greed on the part of the city’s ‘custodians’.

The sale of outdoor advertising is an enormously lucrative business for officials from various land authorities who have not desisted from commercialising even green belts and footpaths that, by virtue of being amenities, cannot by law be commercialised.

What will it take for the state to realise that it cannot be allowed to barter away the citizens’ rights in the obscene pursuit of material gain?

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2016