KARACHI’S Abbasi Shaheed hospital offers a stark example of how politics at its most unscrupulous and self-serving can play havoc with the lives of people. A report in this paper last week painted a disturbing picture of the conditions prevailing at the third largest public-sector hospital in the city where every day over 2,000 patients seek treatment. The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation that runs this 950-bed hospital finds itself unable to provide even 10pc of the budgetary allocation set aside for it, and with philanthropic donations insufficient to meet expenses, all units at the health facility are facing a dire shortage of life-saving medicines and other essential supplies. Half the machines are out of order and the laboratory only has the capacity to conduct the most basic tests.

The Abbasi Shaheed hospital is one of the casualties of the power struggle between the PPP and the MQM over Karachi. One of the measures taken by the PPP provincial government to neutralise the MQM was to cripple KMC, the central body responsible for providing municipal services to Karachi — and where most of the employees were from the MQM — by creating district municipal corporations reporting directly to the provincial government. The subsequent devolution of education, health and local taxes departments to the DMCs last year has been nothing short of a financial catastrophe for KMC. To put things in perspective, prior to the creation of DMCs, the local taxes department alone generated over a billion rupees in revenue. Now the KMC faces a shortfall of Rs93m even in paying the salaries of employees at KMC and Karachi Development Authority, as well as at the health facilities that it runs, including the Karachi Medical and Dental Clinic, Spencer Eye Hospital, Sobhraj Maternity Hospital, etc. While there was undoubtedly much to criticise in the way KMC functioned, and the blatant nepotism and corruption in its ranks, it is shameful that the price of political gamesmanship in the metropolis is being borne by the ordinary citizen.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2016