For the people of Pakistan, the 2006 monsoon leaves behind painful memories; TV channels showed the world how they suffered. While the damage suffered by people in the hinterland was unusually high compared to earlier monsoons, the cities suffered beyond their capacity to bear and, Karachi – Pakistan’s biggest industrial and financial centre – suffered the most.
The response speed of the administration shows that damage to the infrastructure will take years to repair. A look at just the road network shows that almost all thoroughfare were damaged, and pretty badly. While the repairs will cost huge sums of money, during the repair phase transport will become a nightmare, and will escalate the industry’s costs. The extensive damage to drainage, power and telecom lines could cause widespread frustration and unmanageable chaos.
Inability of the country’s biggest industrial city to function at its pre-monsoon pace (which was by no means satisfactory) will have negative consequences for the economy as a whole because repair work will result in postponing development work elsewhere. That isn’t all; repair expense will enlarge fiscal deficit beyond its already ascending projections. Public sector borrowing will suck in more bank credit and starve private sector borrowers. Economic growth will suffer due to the huge losses suffered by the industrial and commercial sector.
Industries in almost all major industrial cities could not operate at their usual pace because of prolonged power outages, and suspension of transport due to network breakdowns. Both domestic and export orders worth billions were lost/held up either completely or for their better part, reducing the prospects of growth, revenue collection, and export earnings. Following rains that began on July 31, most factories in SITE, Korangi and North Karachi industrial areas were without power for a week; they could run only for a few hours a day on their own power.
Based on 05-06 GDP figure (Rs6,130 billion at current factor cost with Karachi producing half of it), estimated losses in those seven days alone exceeded Rs55 billion. These losses will triple or quadruple until life returns to normal in the coming weeks or, perhaps, months.
Commercial markets fared no better. Most of them remained inaccessible, and their ground floors and basements (often serving as warehouses) were flooded, with billions worth of stocks destroyed wholly or partly. Bulk of these losses can’t be retrieved because businesses find outlay on insurance a mere waste. Irrespective of their questionable practices, the fact is that a huge number of businesses will end up with losses, and sales and income tax collection will take a dip.
It is well worth asking, “why was the damage so extensive whose economic fallout will be enormous?” Undoubtedly, rain was ferocious but should the infrastructure collapse on such a scale, especially the parts built recently using modern design and construction technology. Should we blame this monumental collapse on modern design and construction technology? Or was it due to the dishonestly or incompetence, or both, of the builder-supervisor combine? Or was it because the government ignored weather forecasts and did not prepare in advance for the coming tragedy?
Whichever the case, this mess places in doubt the expertise of Pakistani construction planners, supervisors and builder/contractors. This is no ordinary affair. It needs in-depth investigation, before more of the taxpayers’ money is placed in their hands for squandering it away. An investigation to identify the culprits would be in the interest of the civil engineering fraternity and construction contractors. In the absence thereof blame will lie squarely with engineers and builder/contractors.
Things (obvious even without a formal investigation) indicate chaotic (or was it simply callous?) management of the city by its present and previous governments. The way the sewerage and rainwater drainage systems were blocked to help build huge plazas, led to the disaster. Rainwater simply couldn’t find its way to the sea.
Planners and constructors of new roads paid no attention to road banking nor verified that drains running alongside were unblocked to drain the rainwater off the roads. It is shocking that CDGK has not updated its decades old city map showing the underground network of gas, water, sewerage, power and telecom lines.
Given the recent frantic pace of construction (and burying of scores of fresh sewerage lines, with scant concern for their connectivity), it is anybody’s guess what is the network’s shape, and are the drains inter-connected. In this milieu, it is no surprise that gutters keep overflowing as if it was Karachi’s fate.
This apathy encouraged builders to go on doing what they are doing – build plazas with no concern for what will happen to the city’s sewerage and utility supplies system. Over-flowing gutters are not the only example of citizens’ apathy; they don’t protest against a lot that their city governments shouldn’t be doing. Because the protesting forums (all credit to them) are not supported by the citizens as openly and effectively as they should be, city governments go on doing what they consider right in their wisdom.
No one would like to obstruct the city government; it will amount to craving for the old corrupt bureaucratic system. This, however, doesn’t imply foregoing accountability. Whatever happened in the last few weeks proves that the city planners lack competence, if nothing else.
City governments must not be allowed to compound their offence by mis-prioritising development work, and refusing to take good advice. Many city government functionaries are inexperienced. That this is so, is proved by the fact that these governments simultaneously launch too many development projects without realising that such a policy dilutes planning and supervision effort, and over stretches contractors’ resources, which results in poor work quality, defective finish, and also pushes up resource prices. This is a recipe for disaster.
While city governments must carry the blame essentially for execution errors, the federal government carries a far bigger share of responsibility for what we face now. In the last six years, in spite of repeated assertions by concerned observers, the government did not commence a massive infrastructure refurbishment exercise that had become overdue.
Even if you set aside everything else for a start, just look at the expansion in power generation capacity and building of water reservoirs. Growth in these sectors was negligible. Yet, the government pursued a policy of low fiscal deficit (ironically, close to the EU level) and low allocation for PSDP, and in spite thereof, held out assurances about development.
In this backdrop, it is worth asking whether the government was pursuing a sustainable growth policy or some other (the feel-good?) policy. It would be a folly to believe that growth can be sustained without strengthening both physical and social infrastructures of a country. Dams, bridges and railway networks are collapsing because of their continued neglect due to insufficient allocation for their maintenance, and substantial waste of those already inadequate allocations.
It is a dangerous scenario because, while the pressure of population growth requires building new dams, bridges, roads, highways, railways and a host of other things, the existing infrastructure is slowly but surely falling apart. In such a backdrop, our priorities must be re-building the collapsing infrastructure and adding to it to meet rising demand. But do we have the resources for both?
The advice to suck out the post-9/11 liquidity from the banking system, and use it for rebuilding the infrastructure not only fell on deaf ears, but also was denied by the policy-makers. Now that much-needed resource base is stuck in un-productive uses and lending banks can pull it out pre-maturely, only at the expense of suffering losses.
The other alternative is to pick up the begging bowl once again (that we were told had been broken forever). ADB, which voluntarily offered substantial funds for re-building Karachi’s collapsing infrastructure, may not be as willing to foot the repair bill a second time simply because we wasted the earlier bail-out.
It is imperative that we don’t cover up the past errors but discuss them openly so that lessons are learnt, a lot more eyes besides the city government’s can see and prevent things from going wrong.