THE Sindh government finally appears to be stirring from its slumber. With millions of Karachiites daily navigating the misery of perpetually choked, severely dilapidated roads, it is now finalising a Rs25bn ‘special package’ to repair damaged infrastructure. “Funds are not an issue; I want work to be done on a war footing,” Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah reportedly said at a meeting this Monday. But if funding is not an issue and the city is to be rehabilitated expeditiously, why, then, was no thought given earlier to the pockmarked and potholed roads that seem to have almost come to define Karachi? For months, the cost of civic authorities’ neglect has been borne by the long-suffering residents, who have paid heavily in the form of lost time and productivity, damage to their automobiles, and health complications due to the constant clouds of dust now hanging over the city from dug-up roads and incomplete infrastructure projects.

The Karachi mayor also has some answering to do. While seeking the funds, he informed the attendees of the aforementioned meeting that 315 inner city streets were “severely damaged and require urgent attention”, and that another “60 major roads across the city were scheduled for reconstruction”. All of that damage did not occur overnight. Granted that managing a city as big as Karachi is not an easy task, but those responsible for its upkeep should have been keeping up with its requirements, not letting issues turn into crises. Major arteries like University Road have been in an abhorrently dilapidated state for many months, and no real effort seems to have been made to ease the problems this has caused. Large parts of the city seem to have been forgotten altogether, and their streets have been falling apart for years now. The Sindh government and the city’s administration need to commit to their responsibility. There is a big challenge ahead of them.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2025