KARACHI, Dec 24: The City Nazim, Mustafa Kamal, has said that projects initiated by the former city nazim, Niamatullah Khan, had neither been withdrawn nor works on them stopped.

On the contrary, work on the said projects has been expedited after overcoming problems, technical defects and impediments in their way, he said.

He said this while addressing under-training officers of the district management group from all over the country, who met him at his office on Saturday.

To a query, the nazim pointed out that the city government faced no problems in preparing five-year development plans because whatever planning was chalked out or development schemes initiated, the same were completed by future city governments as well, saying that the development process should continue.

Mr Kamal said that for the first time, work on preparing a complete master plan had started, telling the meeting participants that Karachi being the 10th biggest city of the world was without a master plan.

He thanked President Pervez Musharraf who, he said, had started mega projects for the first time in the city including the Lyari Expressway, Northern Bypass, K-III 100-mgd water supply project and Tameer-i-Karachi programme. He said these would bring about a positive change in Karachi.

He informed that had immediate attention not been paid to the repair and replacement of old water and sewerage lines, the K-III project would not have benefited people because the 35-year-old and obsolete water supply system was not in a position to hold water from the K-III.

To a question, the city nazim said, “We believe in serving the people of Karachi without discrimination and solving their problems. This is our agenda and policy, and nothing else.”

He said that despite being affiliated to the Haq Parast group, the city government had provided as much amount to the towns having no Haq Parast nazims as to the towns with Haq Parast nazims, and this policy would continue in future as well.

“I consider the entire Karachi as my constituency and the problem of every person living in it as my problem, which I have to solve,” he said, adding that it was the only philosophy with which he was working to solve the problems of Karachiites.—APP