KARACHI: Mayor Barrister Murtaza Wahab on Saturday asked the city’s businessmen to join hands with the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) to build IT centres, vocational institutions and facilitation centres on the land and spaces provided by the city administrations under public-private partnerships.

With that initiative, he explained, the KMC would utilise several of its abandoned assets to raise revenue and the city’s businessmen and industrialists would get space for commercial activities that would ultimately generate business in the country’s financial capital.

Addressing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signing ceremony at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) between the KMC and the city businessmen to rehabilitate Jubilee Market and Miraj Market under the public-private partnership, mayor Wahab invited the business community of the city to design more such plans.

“I wonder when I look at the assets of the KMC,” he said while addressing the ceremony. “Several properties of the KMC are underutilised or being misused and several are lying abandoned. So I invite the businessmen of the city to come forward and join hands with the KMC. We have several assets and spaces. Let’s make a partnership where you build IT centres, vocational institutes and facilitations on such spaces.”

That would generate revenues for the KMC from such spaces, where it’s income for the municipal body was non-existent right now, he said and referred to the proposed space for parking plazas at all the KMC buildings under the public-private partnership.

“We often try to find solutions from wrong platforms,” he said in reference to petitions filed against different KMC moves.

“The solution lies only in engagements with the political platforms. I have little more than three years left [as mayor Karachi]. My doors are open to everyone. I invite you all to come to me. We will sit together and find solutions of all problems through dialogue and collective wisdom,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2024