KARACHI: Speakers at the “National Conference on Managing Megacities 2024” on Tuesday discussed a number of challenges and issues in megacities of Pakistan, especially in Karachi, and suggested ways to overcome those problems through reforms from local to national levels.

The conference was organised by the department of public administration, University of Karachi, which brought together scholars, researchers and political stakeholders to explore and discuss challenges and opportunities of managing megacities in the contemporary world.

Speaking on the occasion, Karachi Mayor Barrister Murtaza Wahab said the biggest challenge was the unavailability of the correct data of Karachi’s population as the results of Digital Census had been rejected by a majority of people as unfounded.

He said that to manage even a household, it was necessary to know as to how many people lived there. Similarly, better management of the city was not possible without knowing how many people were there and that very issue also led to financial challenges and poor estimates of expenditure needed for the city’s development, he added.

Problems in managing Karachi and other big cities discussed at KU conference

The mayor stressed that it was important to have the actual data of Karachi’s population for government representatives to make effective decisions and sustainable development projects.

He said another major challenge was financial. The people of Karachi were not “mindful” of their duties towards the city, especially paying municipal tax, which led to significant financial challenges. On the other hand, the city administration could not be expected to perform well without such taxes, he added.

The third major challenge, he pointed out, was a political one.

He said society had become socially and politically polarised and there were differences of opinion to the extent that people/political parties were not willing to engage with each other. And because of such opposition, many decisions taken by the government were stopped, he added.

Speaking of other challenges, the mayor referred to executive decision making process which, he said, had been stifled and weakened.

Referring to the issues of government representatives, he said they were afraid of making decisions freely, which ultimately led to bad governance.

Dean of Faculty of Architecture and Management Sciences at NED University Dr Noman Ahmed said: “Karachi’s progress, growth and development has been affected due to inappropriate development choices, lack of maintenance of infrastructure, breakdown of municipal services and capacities.”

He said there were many projects and packages that were announced and initiated for Karachi, but they were without any plan. Without proper plans, all such projects and packages were “vague allocations aiming to obtain credit for performance”, he added.

He said many expensive projects were being undertaken in an isolated manner. Giving an example, he said the BRT projects could not solve the city’s transportation issues and asked why such costly projects had been started.

He said a rational approach towards such issues could cause a positive change.

It was also important, he said, to find alternatives to high visibility developments and practice democracy in making development choices by bringing all stakeholders in the city into the process and consulting with them.

Assistant Professor at the Usman Institute of Technology (UIT) University Ammad Zafar gave a detailed briefing of the themes and objectives of the conference and highlighted data which showed multiple factors that impacted Karachi’s transportation system, economy, water resources, health facilities and education system among others.

Singer and social activist Shehzad Roy highlighted the importance of qualified teachers and said that licensing of teachers was needed for that.

He lauded the Sindh government’s initiative to issue licences to teachers.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2024