The Karachi Citizens Forum (KCF) has called for the immediate elections of the local government and empowered municipal system for Karachi calling it the key to fight the menace of street crimes, rebuilding fast deteriorating infrastructure and address growing uncertainty in the country’s business capital.
Senior members of the KCF and Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) told a press conference on Friday that they were concerned that the authorities had failed to contain the spiralling crime graph in Karachi, owing to which hundreds of citizens had lost their lives during the past few months.
“For the last few years Karachi has also been regarded as the crime capital city of Pakistan,” said Prof Fateh Muhammad Burfat, the former vice chancellor of Sindh University. “It is amazing that the prime city of Pakistan does not have an elected mayor for years and municipal elections are deferred time and again.
He said 10,000 CCTV cameras or the Rs30 billion sanctioned for the Karachi safe city project would not yield the desired result if the base for success was not secured.
Dr Qaisar Sajjad said due to the increasing crime rate and other civic issues people were getting sick of psychological disorders. Due to such situation, he said, waterborne diseases, mosquito-borne diseases and lungs diseases were also spreading rapidly, he said. Nargis Rahman, KCF convener, said that the process of Karachi’s mayoral election must be expedited and not postponed indefinitely. The city of New York and London, she said, improved considerably in the liveability and crime index by the workings of empowered mayors.
