KARACHI, Feb 11: To improve the service delivery of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, the city government has constituted an 11-member reforms committee with City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal in the chair, Dawn learnt reliably.
According to a notification issued by the District Coordination Officer, the committee was formed to counter the persistent lack of governance and improve the service delivery of the water utility.
Other members of the committee include the DCO, KWSB additional vice chairman, EDO Finance, KWSB managing director, DMD (planning) and Chief Engineer (implementation and planning design).
To make this body more representative, balanced and acceptable, two out of 18 town nazims would be included in it of whom one would be from other than the ruling party. Besides, a civil engineer would be a member from the civil society while another member would be taken from the industrial areas.
The terms of reference include revision of the proposals of ‘homegrown’ structural, regulatory and institutional reforms and the proposals of other agencies related to institutional reforms in the KWSB. Besides, it will approve the reforms for implementation on experimental basis and make changes where necessary. After approval, the committee will send these recommendations to the provincial steering committee for the final approval.
Moreover, the committee will arrange and approve the fiscal support for the reforms and review and decide upon the tariff rationalisation or revision to improve the imbalance between expenditure and recoveries.
The committee will also review and approve the proposals related to improvement in revenue and financial management and the key issues hampering the departmental efficiency and decide upon corrective measures.
The formation of the reforms committee is an effort by the civic authorities to correct and improve the functionality of the water utility.
The key issues, which the KWSB management has found responsible for its disorganization include ineffective and non-coherent rules and regulations within the organization and lack of adequate regulations (water bylaws), monitoring and enforcement of rules.
Besides, lack of strategy and ability to transfer knowledge of the aging workforce, lack of assets management and maintenance policy, lack of performance, skill management strategy.
Other issues confronting the water utility include its inability in rationalization of tariff structure, lack of revenue enhancement and collection strategy and poor financial management, tedious financial rules and lack of checks and rationalization of technical manpower and engineers to staff ratio.