KARACHI, March 17: Ghalib Library has been without electricity for the past two months, thanks to the Habib Bank which left behind a hefty unpaid power bill when it vacated the premises last year.
Sources told Dawn on Wednesday that the city government was not entirely blameless in this matter. They added that for the past two months the city government had been sitting on an application filed by Ghalib Library for the issuance of a no-objection certificate which it needed to obtain a new electricity connection.
They added that the file containing the application had now landed on the desk of the city government's revenue official after spending some time at the culture department.
They said that City Nazim Niamatullah Khan had paid a visit to the library on Feb 20, 2003. "He promised that the city government would build a library on the ground floor of the building which had been vacated by the Habib Bank earlier this year.
This high-profile visit was followed by another visit of a city government official who inspected the building. However, the city government seems to have lost its interest in the project," they said.
Run by Idara Yadgar-i-Ghalib, Ghalib Library possesses more than 30,000 books as well as old literary magazines. It was founded by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Mirza Zafarul Hasan during the centenary celebrations of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.
The sources said that under an agreement, the library was supposed to receive the rent paid by the Habib Bank to the defunct Karachi Metropolitan Corporation.
"This practice of paying grant-in-aid - which was actually the rent of the Habib Bank - was discontinued by the KMC in 1995. The KMC maintained that no funds could be made available to Ghalib Library because they were not giving grant-in-aid to any library.
Our plea was that the KMC was not giving us any grant-in-aid. It was giving us the rent paid by Habib Bank." They recalled that the Islamabad-based Academy of Letters used to give Ghalib Library a paltry sum of Rs10,000 on an annual basis.
"The Academy of Letters stopped giving Ghalib Library this fund about 10 years ago. The Infaq Foundation gives the library about Rs100,000 every year for publication of books," they said.
Ghalib Library officials said the library had back issues of very old literary magazines, such as Awadh Punch, Al-Hilal, Nigar, Afkar, Nairang-i-Khyal, etc.
"This library has almost all the written and published material on Ghalib. It has original scripts of TV and radio plays. It also has magazines and souvenirs brought out by universities and colleges," they said.