KARACHI, Nov 18: Speakers at a workshop on Saturday stressed that there should be one civic agency to manage and control the entire city and the laws passed by such an agency should be applicable to the whole territory and entire population of the city equally and without any discrimination.

They were expressing their views at the workshop on “Karachi 2025: a city of dreams – visioning for a better tomorrow”, organised jointly by an NGO, the Shehri – citizens for a better environment, and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

A social activist and town planner, Arif Hassan, said that a popularly elected government working in a transparent manner, and a legal system ensuring justice and implementation of laws equally on every citizen were the basic requirements for improving conditions in the city. The country should move from the present representative democracy to the participatory democracy. Referring to the major problem traffic mess, he said if wholesale markets were moved out of the city, oil terminals and pipelines redesigned, and mass transit system introduced, the bulk of the heavy vehicles would not enter the city to create a mess.

Arif Bilgrami of the Institute of Architects Pakistan offered help to the city administration in preparing a master plan to facilitate future development work in a planned manner. He observed that some of the mega projects like Karachi Elevated Expressway, DHA Beachfront project, DHA Creek City, KPT Port Tower, DHA Crescent City, NLC Enshaa Towers, PQA Bundal Island, AWT Complex, IT Tower etc., had been proposed at the instance of government agencies to avail exemption from building control and construction bylaws.

Roland D’Souza of Shehri referred to the WWF report, Living Planet 2006, and said that people around the world were consuming more resources than the earth could regenerate and if the consumption patterns were not changed immediately, the world might face a disaster soon. He said that the UAE had overtaken USA to become the highest per capita waste generating country in the world.

Senator Rukhsana Zuberi of PPP said that the people’s taxes were not spent wisely. Citing an example, she said that governments always found funds to buy luxury cars in an unlimited number but were always fall short of funds when it came to procuring ambulances.