Rehabilitation of people displaced by demolitions along nullahs not likely any time soon: Wahab

No rehabilitation of the people displaced due to the demolitions along the Gujjar and Orangi drains is going to take place any time soon, said Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) Administrator Barrister Murtaza Wahab, who is also a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader and adviser to the Sindh chief minister on law, on Friday.

He was speaking at a dialogue titled ‘Karachi: The Way Forward’ at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) on Friday. IBA Executive director Dr Akbar Zaidi conducted the dialogue.

The most surprising aspect of the event was Wahab sounding like former Karachi mayor Wasim Akhtar of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) as the incumbent KMC administrator, like his predecessor Akhtar, continued to complain about how powerless he was regarding so many matters of the city and how despite being the head of the KMC, he had no say in the affairs of many civic authorities.

He explained how the KMC was following the Supreme Court’s orders of clearing the Gujjar and Orangi nullahs of encroachments. He said 250 acres of land had been allocated in Surjani Town in District West for the people displaced due to the demolitions and the provincial government wanted to rehabilitate them by constructing housing units.

However, he clarified that one must not expect this to be accomplished any time soon as the rehabilitation cost had been estimated at Rs10 billion, of which the chief minister had so far allocated Rs1 billion for the ground work. “The rehabilitation will not take place in a week time. It will not happen immediately,” he maintained.

One of the affected persons from the Gujjar Nullah, Arif Shah, who had come to the event straight from the funeral of a women who had died of heart attack on Friday as her home near the Gujjar Nullah had been demolished by the KMC, forcefully took the microphone during the question and answer session and remarked that had the authorities taken action against illegal demolitions, a life would have been saved.

The man said that the KMC administrator had not once visited the affected families. “Since last 13 months, we have been trying to contact you, but you don’t see us,” he said.

To this, Wahab responded that he had not visited them because he could not help them. “The reason is that our government not once, but several times have in front of the court shared that there will be a humanitarian issue, and [demolitions] need to be reconsidered,” he said. “The decision to demolish your houses is not by the Sindh government, but by the courts.”

Referring to a tweet that claimed that KMC officials were asking for sexual favours against sparing demolitions, Wahab said how he himself requested the person who had posted the tweet to share the names of such officials, but he was given no particular names.

Wahab lamented how alone the jurisdiction over Sharea Faisal was divided into various municipalities and cantonment boards. He explained how street lights were working in the portions of Sharea Faisal, which were under the KMC’s control, and the portions of the thoroughfare under cantonment boards did not have functional street lights.

The administrator pointed out how his own house in Defence Housing Authority (DHA) was flooded during the massive 2020 rains, and he could not do much about it as the DHA was under the federal government. “The DHA has water, sewage, garbage and infrastructure issues,” he asserted, asking why people rarely questioned them but always scapegoated the Sindh government.

Speaking on the tax issues of the KMC, Wahab again reminded of Akhtar when he explained how the KMC’s yearly municipal tax collection was Rs201 million but their target was around Rs1 billion. Of the Rs201 million, he said, Rs41 million went to their collection agents and they were left with only Rs116 million, an amount too insufficient to run the entire city with. However, Wahab then criticised the former MQM-P mayor

Wahab, saying no once had stopped him from enhancing the KMC’s tax collection. For himself, he the KMC administrator said that he wanted to enhance the municipality’s tax collection through the K-Electric bills but the federal government did not allow him to do so.

Wahab said the KMC had 62 commercial markets with 9,100 shops at commercially viable and lucrative locations but the tax collection from them was hardly Rs100 million.

He added that the KMC had 245 huts along the beach, terming them gold mines in terms of their potential to generate revenue. However, he explained that the amount the corporation received from those huts was a meagre Rs16,000 per year.

Likewise, he said the corporation had 11 functional duel stations in the city that it had outsourced to various people, from whom it received a meager Rs70,000 to Rs80,000 annually.

He pointed out that the National Stadium, Agha Khan University Hospital and Liaquat National Hospital were located on the KMC’s land but no one collected tax from them. He lamented that when he tried to increase the rent from the fuel stations and huts, the tenants went to court and obtained stay orders.

On the controversy over asking the KE to collect municipal taxes, Wahab said the power utility also charged Rs100 in the head of TV licence fees in its bills. He told the event that if the KE would collect municipal taxes, the KMC’s tax collection could rise from Rs21 million to Rs7.04 billion.

He said the Sindh government was doing three things to solve the water problems, on the completion of which 120 million gallons of additional water would be added daily in Karachi. He explained that Karachi got water from the Keenjhar Lake and Hub Dam and both these water sources were managed by the federal government. He explained that the provincial government was trying to bring more water to the city from a canal and the Haleji Lake, and it was also working on desalination projects.