KARACHI: The City Council’s session on Wednesday lasted for only 20 minutes and was adjourned by Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar after the house adopted three resolutions amid continuous uproar by members from both sides of the aisle.

The session, held at the council hall in the Old KMC Building, began with usual decorum for a while before Junaid Makati of the Jamaat-i-Islami stood up and asked Mayor Akhtar, who was in the chair, to devote the sitting to problems being faced by various union committees of the city.

His demand was supported by Opposition Leader Karamullah Waqasi, who said the order of the day should be scrapped and the session’s time be spent on the hardships being faced by various neighbourhoods of the metropolis.

Mayor Akhtar said the business of the day reflected the problems of the city. Besides, he offered to the opposition parties that they could raise their issues one by one once the scheduled business was over.

Opposition members lodge a noisy protest claiming mayor denied debate on city problems

His words lacked the impact to pacify the opposition benches. Members of all the opposition parties, some of them climbing over their desks, kept on chanting slogans and thumping desks.

Members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, which dominates the council, responded to the opposition with their own slogans and thumping of desks only to add to the pandemonium. Their members too climbed over the desks.

Between all this, Mr Waqasi said the quorum was not complete for the session to continue. The mayor rejected his claim by saying there were 132 members in the house while it required presence of 102 members for the quorum.

The mayor, however, showed little worry in working out the business in hand and put three resolutions before the house separately.

Through one resolution, the Sindh government was asked to increase funds for every UC from Rs200,000 to Rs600,000 to help the UCs effectively perform routine works and solve problems of their constituents.

Contract for charged parking approved

In another resolution, the contract of collecting charged parking fee on 27 locations for the current year was approved and the council gave approval of the surrender of grant-in-aid amount of Rs1 million from a budget head and its re-appropriation in another budget head for purchase of chemicals and medicines for the KMC sports complex.

The members, predominantly belonging to the MQM-P, supported the resolutions and got them passed with majority votes.

Mayor Akhtar said the elected representatives were making all-out efforts to solve the city’s problems and improvement was being made in the affairs of various departments.

He said in the past the amount recovered from the charged parking fee was embezzled.

He said the resolutions passed were all aimed at making the KMC financially strong.

Mr Akhtar said the resolution demanding an increase in the UCs’ funds would be sent to the provincial government for further action.

He said the elected representatives were doing their best to provide relief to the residents of their constituencies despite the fact that conditions were not favourable.

He had to end the session quickly after passage of the resolutions when the pandemonium in the house refused to die down.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2018