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KARACHI, Sept 8: City Nazim Niamatullah Khan has sought magisterial powers for the officials having responsibility of price control, saying that the city government would not be able to check prices of essential commodities unless such powers were delegated to the officials.
The city nazim was speaking at the Meet the Press programme of the Karachi Press Club here on Wednesday. Acknowledging that the city government had failed in checking price hike, he said that it had succeeded in controlling the prices of essential commodities to a great extent when its officials had been given magisterial powers for one month.
The officials, he pointed out, started facing problems after the provincial government stripped them of magisterial powers. He told the audience that the CDGK was trying its best to get the powers restored.
In reply to a question about shifting of inter-city bus termini from their existing places in the residential areas of the city to somewhere on the RCD Highway, Super Highway and National Highway, the nazim said that two bus termini were being set up, one on the RCD Highway and the other on Super Highway. Both of them would be completed by the end of next month and the shifting process would commence shortly afterwards.
"Some delays had occurred in the construction work," he pointed out and said that this was because of either encroachments or some technical hitches. Reiterating that Karachi does not have a transport system, he indicated that shortly after taking the charge of city nazim, he devoted all his energies towards resolving the city's lingering transport problem. In this regard, he mentioned the initiative of bringing in some 200 new large-size buses under the CDGK's Urban Transport Scheme.
"Another 60 such buses will be brought in in a couple of days and the strength of the fleet will rise to 500 by December this year," he said, adding that as a matter of fact, the number of such buses would have doubled had the government not withdrawn the SRO, under which importers of new buses had been provided relief in import duty, customs duty and sales tax.
He maintained that Punjab and NWFP had been benefiting from the incentives but when the CDGK started importing the new buses under the UTS, the SRO had been withdrawn. He hoped that importers of new buses would expedite the process under the scheme now when the CDGK had succeeded in getting the SRO restored.
Asked whether the present 20/30-year-old buses still plying in the city would be phased out and the noise-making rickshaws withdrawn from roads, the city nazim replied in affirmative.
MASS TRANSIT: Deploring that no practical measures have, so far, been taken towards the implementation of the mass-transit scheme although tens of millions of rupees had been spent on its feasibility reports since 1952, Niamatullah Khan said that the CDGK had recently signed a preliminary agreement with a Chinese firm for laying tracks for introducing light rail train between Sohrab Goth and Mereweather Tower at an estimated cost of 600 million dollars on a credit finance basis.
He said that the CDGK had signed the agreement after Sindh governor had signed a memorandum of understanding with the same firm which had not been agreeing to undertake the Corridor-I project on BOT (build, operate and transfer) basis.
"However, the federal planning commission, which is of the opinion that the agreement had been signed on a higher side and the project's contract should be given on a BOT basis, had formed a committee to review the project's cost as well as the terms and conditions of the preliminary agreement with the firm."
He hoped that the committee would take some concrete and positive decision with regard to the Corridor-I project by the end of this month. Listing the development projects undertaken by the CDGK over the past three years, the city nazim said they included construction of almost all busy and important roads by using American 'Astho' technology.
Besides, he added, the Shah Faisal Colony flyover had been built three months ahead of schedule, and also at a cost of Rs190 million as against its original cost of Rs280 million.
He pointed out that more than a dozen roundabouts, including those at Purani Numaish, Guru Mandir, Board Office, Nagan Chowrangi and Five-Star intersection, had been redesigned and improved.
As a result, he added, not only the flow of traffic had been streamlined but traffic jams had also been checked effectively at these roundabouts. He said that the FTC and Shahrah-i-Quaideen flyovers would be completed in a year or so.
UPLIFT PLANS: The city nazim revealed that work on five more flyovers and 20 major roads, including link roads in different towns, would begin in the next three months.
Emphasizing the need for improving the city's infrastructure, he said that about one-third amount of the Rs29 billion Karachi Package, approved by President Musharraf for the rehabilitation of civic infrastructure, was meant for water and sewerage plans.
Describing water as a major issue of Karachi, Naimatullah Khan said that with the completion of the K-III project, under which the city would be getting an additional 100 million gallons per day, the city's water shortage problem would be resolved to some extent.
Highlighting the importance of education, the nazim said that it was for the first time in the history of Karachi that 31 per cent funds had been earmarked for this sector in the CDGK's budget. The figure, he pointed out, was much higher than the allocations for this sector in the federal or provincial budgets.
ADMISSION POLICY: Making mention of the CDGK's Centralized Admission Policy (CAP), whereby admissions to first-year classes in colleges were being given strictly on merit basis, the nazim said that with the implementation of the policy, not only the meritorious students were able to get admissions to the colleges of their choice, but the results of a number of non-prestigious colleges had improved considerably.
MODEL PARKS: The city nazim also spoke of model parks being developed in different towns and said that four of them had already been constructed whereas some more would be built soon. About the Safari Park, he said that with the opening of its Safari area, the number of visitors now ran in thousands every day.
Referring to the ownership of the KPC building, Mr Khan said that the plot given to the owner of the club building as compensation was still in possession of an Anti-terrorists Court. He, however, stated that the CDGK was trying its best to get the plot vacated.
