IT was a difficult period for young boys and girls who aspired to become engineers because of the shortage of seats at educational institutions in the city. On Feb 3, 1975, a newly formed body of the ‘first divisioners’ awaiting admission to engineering colleges in Karachi, the Pre-Engineering Students Action Committee, sent a memorandum to the Sindh education minister on the new admission policy for NED College. It urged the government to increase the number of seats in evening and morning shifts in order to enable more students to learn the subject. The next day, more specifically, the committee in a meeting demanded 50 more seats be added to the existing 450 at NED Engineering College. They also suggested that admissions should be based on merit.

In those days, a big number of school, college and office-goers used trams for commuting. Unfortunately, on Feb 4, it was announced that Karachi’s 90-year-old tramway service was to disappear permanently in the next three months following a decision taken by the Mohamedali Tramway Company (MTC) to wind up its business. The MTC, the successor to the British East India Tramway Company, on Feb 3 started digging out rails from Daudpota Road (Saddar). After that, the rails on the Saddar-Boultan Market intersection in the month of March were to be removed. The decision was also expected to bring to an end the 11-year-old dispute between the company and the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC). In the early 1960s, the KMC had refused to renew the former’s licence which was challenged in a court of law. It was learnt that the corporation had agreed to undertake the repair of the damaged roads after the rails were taken away. Out of the fleet of 64 tramcars in 1949, the MTC had been left with only five, and its workshop had become more like a junkyard because of the growing number of unserviceable tramcars. Anwar Mohammad Ali, a representative of the company, told the media that 130 drivers, conductors, mechanics and others were in the staff of the company who would be given all service benefits. He’d envisaged a scheme to introduce electric buses for localities such as North Nazimabad and Federal B Area.

According to the details published along with the above-given news item, the first proposal for a tramway in Karachi was made in 1881 by James Strachan, municipal secretary and engineer. In 1884, the East India Tramway Company came into being. The service was introduced in 1885. In 1949, the Mohamedali Tramway Company purchased the business.

That wasn’t the only piece of bad news that Karachiites were trying to come to terms with. On Feb 5, this newspaper in a story claimed that the city was in the grip of measles and every second child coming to the OPD of the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre (JPMC) and Civil Hospital was suffering from the disease. The two hospitals had in the last two weeks received 87 ‘indoor’ patients who had developed complications, apart from providing OPD treatment to several hundred faced with the same problem.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2025