KARACHI, Sept 2: Speakers at a workshop criticised the civic agencies for carrying out beach development projects, which they feared would deny access to the poor masses to the seashore.

These views were expressed at a consultative workshop on “Karachi city: searching for sustainable urban development paradigm” organised by Shehri in collaboration with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation here on Saturday.

The speakers said that people should try to assert their ownership over the city resources and various organisations managing these, as with better monitoring the quality of life of the Karachiites would hopefully improve.

Speaking on the occasion, Arif Hasan, an expert in town planning, said that the ecological concerns had been ignored by KPT while constructing its installation as it did not leave any channel for the flow of water from three main stormwater drains into the sea. This, he said, was a major cause for the disastrous situation experienced by citizens during the recent rains in the city.

He pointed out that the DHA had acquired a 14-km-long strip of land along the beach in the name of ‘development’, adding: “If this process continues, then less citizens will have access to beaches as construction would be carried out all along the beach.”

He deplored the authorities for evaluating plans for the elite only, instead of the majority, which belonged to middle and lower classes and formed more than 70 per cent of the population.

He noted that a large number of Karachiites lived in katchi abadis or slums, and argued that even in the Far East, governments would chalk out plans for housing, development, recreation, etc., for the under-privileged class which lacked basic amenities of life.

He said that in this city, millions of tons of effluent were being flushed and dumped into the sea, adding to the miseries of fishermen communities living in the areas along Korangi Creek for centuries.

Other speakers said that actions such as cellphone or purse snatching provoked resistance but illegal allotment of amenity plots in the city went unnoticed. It was due to fact that in the case of purse etc, there was a sense of proprietorship, while in case of amenity plots one did not feel that they belonged to the residents of the city, so nobody raised any hue and cry and the plunder continued, it was pointed out.

They said that a new coastal development plan was being finalised owing to which almost 80 per cent of the beach, which was a national resource and nobody could restrict anybody’s entry to it, would become private and out of bounds for the common people.

One of the speakers said that some time back the DHA while developing the beach at Seaview Township removed the vendors and others selling low cost edibles, snake charmers, jugglers, and others and the low income group people stopped going there as majority of the families visiting that beach could not afford to buy the expensive food items being sold at the stalls, and that beach became out of the reach of the poor.

Similarly now a huge park is being developed at the Clifton beach by the city government and under a similar exercise people selling low cost food items, etc are being shifted, and after some time this beach will also be out of the reach of the masses.

He said that there were over 150 stalls selling goods made from sea shells for over a century, but now they had been evicted and these people were now selling their goods to shops set up in nearby buildings and their earnings had also declined. All this is going on, but nobody is coming up and raising the issue to protect the right to access the beaches of the poor people, he added.

Another speaker said that many nullahs that used to drain rainwater from the city had been encroached upon and some of these had even been allotted decreasing their capacity to drain the rainwater and during the recent rains, which were just three inches, many portions of the city remained inundated for many days even after the rains had stopped.

They said that owing to the greed of the people managing the city and national resources vast patches of land had been reclaimed from the China Creek, the back waters for the Karachi harbour, thus increasing the dredging cost of the harbour channel. The DHA had also reclaimed land which had affected the sea current.

One of the speakers said that the tendency to speculate in-land and housing among the middle class people had taken roots owing to which, whenever a new housing scheme was announced it was booked, but as a large number of the people getting these plots or flats were speculators so on one hand many plots and flats remained vacant, and on the other a large number of people who wanted these could not afford to purchase such properties. This is due to the speculation which inflates the prices out of the reach of the poor masses, he added.

The speakers said that the recent rains brought to the fore the follies and extreme shortcomings of the urban planning and development in the city and the people suffered the consequences of overflowing sewers, flooded streets and neighbourhoods, power outages and collapse of communication systems, and most of the civic agencies, government or private, were engaged in a heated blame game, accusing each other for being responsible for the unfolding crisis.

They said that as the Northern Bypass was being constructed, so there was no need left for Lyari Expressway, but it was being constructed and over 200,000 people had been uprooted from their ancestral homes in which their families had been living for over 200 years.They said that respiratory tract and eye diseases were increasing owing to the air pollution in the city due to the vehicular smoke while the lead in the fuel was causing retardation among people – women, children and elderly being more vulnerable.

They said over 300 million gallons of raw sewage, including untreated industrial effluents, was entering the sea daily seriously affecting the aquatic life and fragile marine ecosystem. They said that at least two new power plants were coming up in the city without carrying out the mandatory exercise of environmental impact assessment. The speakers were of the view that unless the citizens realised that these were their resources and that the organisations managing these resources were not properly handling these resources and if they did not forge unity to resist against this plunder it would continue to go on. They said that it was time to join hands and raise their voice so that these resources were used wisely and the coming generations could also benefit from these.

They said that earlier, the information regarding these projects etc was not made available by the government departments, but now with the recently announced access to information law hopefully the government organisations would provide information, which was necessary to understand and become aware of the effects of any project or new activity.

Arif Hassan, Tasneem Siddiqui, Roland D’Souza, Dr Noman Ahmad, Amber Alibhai, Farhan Anwer, Hamid Maker, and others also spoke.

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