Last week, PPP leader Najmi Alam reportedly said that if Sindh gets new administrative units, the Karachi mayor should be handed DHA and the cantonments. After 18 years of PPP rule in Sindh, this is not a proposal. It is a dare.
Let me do what Mr Alam apparently didn’t: count what the mayor already runs.
Murtaza Wahab heads the KMC, which includes the fire brigade, chairs the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, and sits on the governing bodies of KDA, MDA and LDA. Around him sit provincial bodies like the SBCA, also in PPP hands. Mr Alam knows this machinery from the inside, having served as vice-chairman of the water board himself. So, in the spirit of a fair audit: name one institution among them that has become better under this mayor. I’ll wait.
The fire department. On the night of 17 January, a fire began at Gul Plaza at 10:14 pm. The first engine left at 10:27 pm. It burned for roughly 24 hours. More than 70 people died, and about 1,200 shops were reduced to ash, in the city’s worst fire since Baldia in 2012. And what does a city of 20 million-plus have to fight such fires? 35 fire stations, by KMC’s own count. In September, fire gutted the mayor’s own office at KMC headquarters. An administration that could not protect its own chamber from a kitchen short circuit now wants Defence.
The gutters. I’ll be blunt: the mayor cannot even keep a lid on a manhole. At least 22 people died in Karachi’s open manholes and drains between January and November last year, eight of them children aged ten or younger. In 2023, the toll reportedly rose to 68. The mayor says the city has 245,000 manholes and that it installed 88,000 new covers last year, leaving roughly 157,000 still to go. A cover costs around Rs700 in the market. After a toddler died, KMC blamed the BRT project, which blamed the water corporation, which said the drain wasn’t its jurisdiction. Karachi’s children keep falling through the gap between your institutions.
University Road. The Red Line was launched in 2022 and was meant to be done by 2024. The deadline slid to 2025, then 2026, and now sits at June 2027, on a road that carries one to 1.5 million vehicles every day. The first contractor was removed, and the FWO took over to finish the job. In August, the senior minister promised the road would be fully motorable by 15 September. On 27 September, he apologised and promised to complete it in two months. Ask any student at Karachi University or NED how that feels. Five years is not a project. It is a sentence.
Lyari. This is the PPP’s own stronghold. In July, four-year-old Shavez drowned in the Lyari River and a young man, Gulab, died trying to save him. Opposition leaders say the major drains remain choked despite a municipal budget of Rs63 billion and billions earmarked for cleaning. Water shortage and uncollected garbage in Lyari are complaints older than some of the councillors who campaign there. If you cannot deliver in your own heartland after 18 years, why should Karachi trust you with its most expensive neighbourhoods?
Now compare. I am not romanticising DHA. Its drainage has its own sins. But walk its streets and then walk Lyari’s lanes. The difference in sweeping, lighting, and basic upkeep is visible to anyone with eyes. Whatever you think of the cantonment boards, they deliver something the mayor hasn’t: maintained roads and cleaned lanes. Even the mayor appears to know it. When he promised DHA a 10 million gallons-a-day water pipeline, he called the Cantonment Board Clifton “very forthcoming” and brought in the FWO to build it. The man who wants to absorb the cantonments is already borrowing their capacity.
Mr Alam has asked voters in PS-110, the Clifton–Defence side of Karachi South, for their votes twice. He knows exactly what a well-kept lane looks like, and exactly how far it is from Lyari’s. The distance between the two is not geography. It is 18 years of PPP governance.
Defenders will say the mayor lacks the powers to deliver. Critics do argue that the 2013 local government law left Karachi’s mayor weak and gave provincial bodies like the SBCA and the waste management board the real control. But whose law is that? And the PPP’s other line is that the Gul Plaza lease dates back to MQM-era mayors: the chief minister blamed the mayor who approved the lease in 1991. You cannot plead powerlessness for today’s failures and ask for more power in the same breath.
Small administrative units are a legitimate debate, and the more local the unit, the more accountable it should be. That is why failed institutions should go to someone who can run them, not the other way around. Fix the manholes. Finish University Road. Clean Lyari. Then ask for Defence. And, Mr Alam, a modest invitation: you and the mayor are welcome to walk Lyari’s lanes this monsoon, with the cameras on.
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