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DECEMBER
2008
ISSUES:
Fading
dream of social justice
IT
wasn’t such a long time ago when a simple, soft-spoken man dressed in
khaddar wearing dark-rimmed glasses used to be a familiar figure in Dawn’s
office.
He would drop by for a chat to tell us about his social engineering
experiments he was undertaking in Orangi, once described as Asia’s
largest slum. Whether it was the drainage scheme, the school programme
or the health plan he was dilating on excitedly, his zeal was always
infectious. It compelled you to visit his projects to learn about them.
Now that Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan is no more — he died in October 1999
— I often wonder had he been around today what the internationally
renowned social scientist would have said about the vanishing norms of
social justice in our society. Hence it came as no surprise that the
Ninth Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan Forum organised last Saturday by OPP-RTI
focused on the issue of social justice.
This came at a time when the ugly forces of capitalism and the free
market are gaining strength. The fact is that the market may be freer
today but it actually restricts the options of the poor whose numbers
are growing rapidly. According to the Islamabad-based Centre for
Research and Security Studies, 49 per cent of Pakistanis fall below the
absolute poverty line.
And the poor were Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan’s constituency. He was their
guide, philosopher and friend. In order to see life through their prism
he had given up his life of power and authority as an ICS officer in the
1940s to work as a labourer and blacksmith for sometime. Hence the theme
of Saturday’s forum, social justice, was very pertinent and
instructive for the community workers from far and near who had gathered
for the moot.
Envisaging equal opportunities and equitable distribution of advantages,
as pointed out by Dr Haroon Ahmed, a leading psychiatrist and the
keynote speaker that morning, the concept of social justice seeks the
realisation of every individual’s full potential. This is society’s
responsibility. But with the role of the state in recession and
globalisation having robbed the developing countries of their choices,
there is little likelihood of the government intervening in favour of
its citizens.
Which sectors but education and healthcare make the greatest impact on a
person’s ability to realise his full potential? Dr Fouzia Qureshi, a
paediatrician who has also worked in community health, succinctly
brought out the close link between health and every aspect of human
life. Disease and poverty, disease and education, disease and employment
— you name it and she would be able to tell you how a person’s
potential is restricted just because he is ill and has no access to
affordable healthcare which should have been his birthright anyway. Dr
Qureshi quoted statistics to show that of the people who fell ill more
were poor, illiterate and from the lower strata. Conversely those who
fell ill did badly in school and in their jobs.
Isn’t there a method by which the depressed classes could uplift
themselves and come out of the indignity of dependence and improve the
quality of their life? There was a time when a determined young man with
a dream could go to the ends of the earth to gain knowledge that landed
him a respectable job. Thereafter it was easy sailing for he could work
his way up. Stories of ‘from rags to riches’ were quite common. No
more today. Education which alone can open doors to new avenues has
become virtually a closed shop. If you are rich and have the right
connections — and the right parentage — you can gain entry into the
best of educational institutions quite effortlessly. Next, with the help
of an impressive degree, that doesn’t really guarantee that you have
learnt anything, you can get a fantastic job for the asking.
Merit doesn’t come into the picture. Social standing does. That is why
Nadia, my domestic help’s nine-year-old daughter, who has the mind of
a genius, may never realise her full potential. Social justice does not
form the underpinning of our society. And since good education for each
and every child is not recognised as a fundamental right — regardless
of what the constitution or the International Convention on the Rights
of the Child, which Pakistan signed and ratified, say — Nadia may
never be able to get the education she can lay claim to. She is lucky
not to be one of the 400,000 children — most of them girls — of her
age who are not even enrolled in school.
After being denied good education will she ever be able to get a job
that fetches her enough money to allow her to leave behind the poverty
she has lived with since the day she was born? Thus society will
continue to be neatly divided between the rich and the poor, each living
in his own separate world with a wide gulf dividing the two. They meet
on the fringes because they still need each other — one for the cheap
labour it provides and the other for the charity it doles out. It is a
pity that education which should have helped bridge this gulf has only
deepened it. The system is so skewed that a small elite class enjoys all
the privileges one can dream of. It uses its advantages to create an
exclusive system that continues to benefit a small group of
beneficiaries while keeping the ‘others’ out of it. The system
perpetuates social injustice in education that helps perpetuate
injustice in employment and health. Thus poverty is never eliminated and
the vicious cycle continues.
Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan spoke of mobilising the people. He also believed
that the government has to be mobilised as well. He spoke of the people’s
partnership with the government. It is here that the crunch comes. So
far the link with the government has not proved to be strong enough. The
question to be asked is: can the commitment be created in the government
to strengthen its partnership with the people?
(By
Zubeida Mustafa, Dawn, 24/12/2008)
Karachi
sewerage system
Treating
the untreated
For
years, Karachi has been riddled with water and sewage-related problems,
and one of the biggest contributing factors to these troubles is the
fact that just half of the city's population is believed to be connected
to the city's sewerage system while the rest make to with alternate
means, if at all.
The
Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) has been running three waste
water treatment plants (TPs) in different parts of the city, but these
are not nearly as effective as they should be. All are outdated, and one
has clogged to a virtual halt. Estimates suggest that of all the sewage
that ends up in the sea, only 40 percent is properly treated. In order
to meet national environmental quality standards (NEQS), industrial
units are required to treat their sewage before discharging it. However,
Kolachi has learnt that barring the tanneries in the Korangi Industrial
Area, no chemical-based wastewater generating unit complies with this
law.
"The
KWSB supplies 650 million gallons per day (MGD) of water to its
consumers," informed Gulzar Memon, KWSB mechanical and electrical
engineer. "We have a formula to determine the wastewater to manage
in return. About 70 percent of the water supplied to consumers becomes
wastewater and drains into the city's sewers."
Memon
conceded that there is a huge gap between the wastewater being generated
and that being treated. According to official calculations, the city
yields approximately 450mgd of sewage, out of which 299mgd is untreated
and left to pollute the sea. Environmentalists say this is a grave
violation of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997. "Not
acting as per its own laws, the government is culpable of opting for
development at the cost of health and the environment," comments a
veteran PCSIR scientist.
Each
KWSB plant should theoretically treat 151 MGD of sewage, but the
treating capacity of each of these plants has plummeted to a mere 60 MGD.
The TP-I, installed in 1959 in SITE area with a designed capacity of 51
MGD, has been treating only 25 MGD, whereas the TP-II, set up at
Mehmoodabad the same year, has a capacity of treating 46 MGD. This
particular plant was forced to stop functioning in October owing to a
series of faults, but when it reopened its performance was below par.
The
TP-III is more recent. It was built in Mauripur in 1998 with a designed
capacity of 54 MGD, but has been treating only 35 MGD.
Not
only do treatment plants fail to treat all the sewage, there are many
areas where the majority opts for makeshift channels for dealing with
sewage such as disposing it outside their houses in lanes connected to a
large pit nearby. Around five to 10 percent the population uses such
septic tanks, mostly in illegal housing schemes.
In
1982, the NGO Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) realised the government's
failure to deliver the required sanitation system, and proposed the
installation of a 'self-financed and self-managed' sewerage system,
offering technical support.
The
new system proved to be a success. People of the area financed the
scheme, building their own sewerage lines and connecting it to their
houses at a fraction of the cost. This line in turn was connected to
trunk sewers installed by the government. The simplified, low-cost
alternative to a government-installed sewage system was in place.
The
OPP, along with its Research and Training Institute (RTI), also brought
about a radical change in the government's policy attitude towards
solving the city's sewage problem. In 1999, the OPP-RTI managed
to secure the cancelled US$100 million Korangi Wastewater
Management Progamme (KWMP).
The
KWMP was known amongst policy makers and town planners as the Greater
Karachi Sewerage Plan (S-III), and would have been built through local
resources and local expertise. Nearly 70 percent of the expense would
have come as loan from the Asian Development Bank (ABD). Originally, the
OPP-RTI's proposal for the KWMP was to involve the existing community
and the sewerage system by the defunct Karachi Municipal Corporation.
According
to architect Arif Hasan, the project would convert drains, which act as
units, disposal into box trunks and place a treatment plant just before
the point where the sewage enters the Korangi Creek, which rendered the
ADB loan unnecessary by dramatically cutting the cost.
Bearing
in mind the existing faulty sewage treatment project, the City District
Government Karachi launched the S-III in 2007 at an estimated cost of
Rs8 billion to maintain the ecological balance of marine life by
improving the capacity of its sewage treatment plants. KWSB officials
estimated that the S-III project would take four years to be completed.
According to them, it was approved by the Executive Committee of
the National Economic Council, with both the federal and Sindh
governments expected to provide funds. KWSB documents suggest that the
approved Greater Karachi Sewerage Plan would double the capacity of the
existing treatment facility under KWSB's belt.
The
utility service also seeks to add another treatment plant in Korangi:
TP-4, which has been designed to have a capacity of 200 MGD. "We
are having the feasibility study and designing the project S-III,"
Gulzar Memon told Kolachi. "The entire system will be upgraded, and
the capacity of existing sewage treatment plants would be increased to
300 MGD." One can only hope for a cleaner beach and effective
disposal of sewage in the years ahead. Till then, one has no choice but
to bear the stench with fingers crossed.
(By
Asadullah, The News, 14/12/2008)
Tree-less
streets
The
cutting of trees in major cities continues. Zafar Ali Road in Lahore has
been among the latest to lose its foliage, as new commercial buildings
creep up along it and the width of the road is increased to accommodate
the ever-increasing flow of cars. In Karachi, hundreds of trees have
made way for similar 'development' works or for the ugly billboards that
now dominate our cityscapes. Even Islamabad has suffered, as have
smaller towns everywhere. Yet it seems wisdom has still to dawn. Our
urban planners do not seem to recognize the cost being extracted as
cities are stripped of their greenery. In terms of pollution and
aesthetics, the price is already visible everywhere. Respiratory
diseases have risen sharply, partly due to increased vehicular
pollution. In central areas of Lahore, now a kind of urban jungle, the
average winter temperature has risen by several degrees as a result of
the concrete and asphalt structures that have replaced trees everywhere.
On his recent visit to Karachi and Lahore, Enrique Pensola, the former
mayor of Bogota, and a man known as one of the visionaries of our times
in terms of urban planning, had asked how Pakistan's rulers could
sanction the building of new roads and expressways when people lacked
housing. He pointed out that the setting up of parks greatly enhanced
life in cities. Yet, for us, 'development' seems to constitute only of
widening roads, building new ones or constructing tall plazas. Some of
these projects, like the Lyari Expressway, in Karachi, have done far
more damage than good. The issue of why and for whose benefit urban
projects are planned must be reconsidered. The mass felling of trees has
a negative impact on just about everyone who lives in a city. The
building of widened boulevards along which those who own cars can speed
benefits only a few. This is all the more true when pavements are
sacrificed for the sake of roads or giant building allowed to take-over
parks. It is time we reconsider our priorities, take our cue from
examples of welfare projects intended to improve the quality of life of
residents in other cities and attempt to replace the hundreds and
thousands of trees that have been chopped down over the years in the
name of 'progress'.
(The
News, 14/12/2008)
Transport
problems ballooning despite tall claims by authorities
Of
the total number of buses that residents of the city currently travel
in, about 4,129 of them are reportedly 15 to 24 years old. Both city and
provincial governments have been making tall claims about providing
citizens with transport facilities including a moonlight train system,
the construction of mass transit corridors, the revival of circular
railways, and a rapid bus transit system, besides claiming to ply
large-capacity CNG buses. However, there seems to be no progress on any
of these projects except for fresh claims after every few months. “The
performance of the City District Government Karachi’s (CDGK) Mass
Transit Cell can be judged from the fact that despite working on public
transport projects for over a decade, it has not managed to place a
brick of any of the projects,” a CDGK official said on conditions of
anonymity.
According to him, the poor performance of the CDGK Mass Transit Cell
director general, Malik Zaheer-ul-Islam, who had the additional charge
of EDO Transport and Communication (T&C), led to relieving him of
his duties and he was asked to concentrate solely on the CNG buses
project.
Current
transport facts
Classified Routes and Number of Permits
|
S.No |
Classification |
Total
No. of Routes |
Total
No. of Permits |
|
1 |
Bus |
68 |
1990 |
|
2 |
Mini-Bus |
145 |
6854 |
|
3 |
Coach |
41 |
3012 |
|
|
Total |
254 |
11856 |
Including
8 UTS and 7 KPTS routes.
The ageing of the Bus fleet in Karachi:
Age of Fleet No of Buses %age of Fleet
1.
Between 45 to 65 years old 34 0.2%
2.
Between 25 to 45 years old 3,417 18.6%
3.
Between 15 to 24 years old 4,129 22.5%
4.
Between 5 to 15 years old 7,652 41.7%
5.
Less than 4 years old 3,118 17.0%
It
is worth mentioning here that the CDGK authorities had placed Iftikhar
Qaimkhani as the new EDO Transport and Communication in place of Malik
Zaheer-ul-Islam a couple of days ago, hoping to resolve at least some of
the problems being faced by the citizens in terms of public transport.
Officials in the CDGK claimed that City Nazim Karachi Mustafa Kamal was
“boiling with rage” on the performance of both, the T&C
department, and the Mass Transit Cell, because officials of both these
departments have “failed to come up to his expectations.” Insiders
claimed that owing to the federal and provincial governments’
involvement in CNG buses project, EDO Mass Transit Cell Malik
Zaheer-ul-Islam was not being replaced at the moment; otherwise, he “could
have been relieved of all his assignments a long time ago.” It is
learnt that the fate of CNG buses project still hangs in the balance as
there was neither any progress on the establishment of five gas stations
for CNG buses, nor were the Statements of Qualifications (SOQs),
submitted by a few parties for plying CNG buses, viable to launch the
project.
On the other hand, the provincial government’s interventions into the
affairs of the city transport projects including the moonlight rail and
bus rapid transit system had also caused a setback to the CDGK’s
efforts in providing some respectable means of transportation in the
city.
The Sindh government recently established the Sindh Mass Transit
Authority (SMTA) and posted a revenue department official as its chief
but despite the passage of over two months, it has failed to convene a
single meeting while it has yet to reach its full composition.
(By
M. Waqar Bhatti , The News, 23/12/2008)
Three
children perish in shanty blaze
Three children were burnt to death while two others were injured in a
fire on Monday in a shanty in the Sindhi School area in Ibrahim Haidery,
Bin Qasim Town.
Residents of the area had to extinguish the fire themselves, and nearby
fire stations, including Korangi, Landhi and Manzoor Colony as well as
the central fire office, had no information about the incident. Even the
area police reached the scene no earlier than 9 am, The News learnt.
The fire broke out around 4 am when a candle in the mud hut of a man
called Abdul Sattar Arfani fell over. Arfani, a fisherman by profession,
lived with his wife and six children. His wife, Nazeeran, had fed their
daughter, six-month-old Azra, and had gone to sleep. She forgot to put
out the candle which fell over during the night and started the fire.
The blaze quickly spread through the two make-shift rooms of the house.
Arfani’s older children, eight-year-old Arbaz and 16-year-old Anita,
got up and woke up their father who tried to evacuate the family. Azra
and seven-year-old Muneera were asleep in a cot. By the time Arfani got
to them, they were dead. Arbaz and Anita suffered burn injuries. The
former was taken to the Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) in a precarious
condition. He died late in the evening. The other children, 11-year-old
Muneer, nine-year-old Raju, and Anita survived. The shanty, however, was
completely gutted.
Arfani’s neighbour, Mohammad, said that when they heard of the fire
they rushed to the scene and started trying to extinguish the blaze
along with other people of the neighbourhood. He was unsure whether
anyone had informed the emergency rescue services, but said that the
first authorities to show up were the police, and even they came around
9 am — five hours after the incident.
The dead were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC),
while the injured were taken to the CHK. Arfani seemed to have lost some
of his mental stability, while Nazeeran kept crying constantly for her
children and exhausted herself to unconsciousness.
The Korangi Fire Station said that they had no information of a fire in
Ibrahim Haideri and mentioned that they had sent two fire tenders to
Sector 8-A to extinguish a fire at a towel factory since they were
informed about it.
Bin Qasim Town Union Council (UC) 1 (Ibrahim Haideri) Naib Nazim Syed
Yousuf Shah said that the family was so poor that the Town Nazim had to
pay for the funeral charges of the two children, food for the survivors
and the construction of a temporary shelter to house the family.
He added that the area people did not know how to contact emergency
services and someone from the area had contacted office-members of the
UC, including Shah, around 7 am. Residents of the area had not even
called an ambulance, Shah said, adding that Muneera had been pulled out
alive from the fire but died soon after due to lack of medical
attention.
He said that the Town had no funds to pledge to the family but were
going to appeal to the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) and the
Sindh government to take note of this incident and help the family.
In another incident, a fire gutted almost 150 shanties in
Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Block 19. The fire in Tayyab Goth, near Aziz Bhatti
Park, Block 19, Gulshan-e-Iqbal started around 5 am Monday. Five fire
tenders worked for two and a half hours to put out the fire. Ghulam, son
of Bux Mohammad, was injured in the blaze, suffering burn wounds on his
back. Abdul Sattar Edhi distributed blankets and food to the victims.
In another incident, an empty train bogey on standby at Cantt Station
caught fire due to unknown reasons. Two fire tenders put out the blaze
which destroyed the seats in the bogey.
(The
News, 23/12/2008)
No
one to wipe their tears, the thousands who cry every day
Almost
every day, one or two people die in Karachi when they resist a robbery
attempt. As the crime rate rises, more and more people become victims of
the city’s roving bandits who are out to make rob and kill, if need
be. Despite the best attempts of the law enforcement agencies, the
killing sprees have not come down. In many instances, those killed are
the bread earners of the family. They leave behind family members who
grieve and live on – in the hope that one day they will get justice.
But they usually never do.
It has been over two years since Feroz Khan was killed by assailants in
a vehicle-snatching incident, but the agony of his death is still fresh
in the minds of his family. There have been many families in Karachi
whose lives have been torn apart by such incidents, a few of whom were
contacted by The News.
Three were reluctant to share their suffering, fearing they will be
targeted again if their story is made public. They feel that the worst
has already happened, and that nothing can compensate for their loss.
The family of Feroze Khan, however, agreed to return to the events that
changed their lives. “This was certainly the will of God,” says Khan’s
eighty-year-old father Noroz Khan in sorrow.
On July 11, 2006, Khan was shot twice after resisting the dacoits who
nabbed the Shahzore Hyundai van he was driving. Injured and alone in a
vacant lot near Hub Chowki at a makeshift cattle market, Khan placed a
call to his family through a mobile phone, pleading someone to come to
take him to hospital. When his brothers arrived at the scene, Khan lay
in a pool of blood.
“He was shot in the navel and the thigh, and his wounds were bleeding
profusely,” says Abdul Wahab, Khan’s younger brother.
Khan’s brothers took him to the nearby Murshid Hospital from where
they were referred to the Civil Hosptial, Karachi (CHK). Before being
operated upon in CHK, Khan, who was still conscious, managed to relate
the incident to his brothers: three persons at Manzoor Colony had asked
him for a lift to Hub Chowki, where they supposedly had to take domestic
items such as chairs and beds from Saeedabad. After settling the fare,
Khan agreed, but shortly after getting in the car, the men held Khan at
gunpoint and commanded him to take them to a deserted area at Hub Chowki.
Upon reaching the destination, they threw Khan out of the vehicle and
drove away. Khan got back up and started walking towards the vehicle
when one of the men fired two bullets at him. Nine hours after that,
Khan breathed his last, leaving behind five sons and a daughter. Today
the youngest, Mudassar, is just four years old and Nauman, his
six-year-old son, can still remember his father.
“My father didn’t even own the vehicle,” laments Khan’s oldest
son, Sarfaraz Ahmed, 15. “He was just the driver.” Khan was the
eldest amongst his brothers, all of whom feel his loss deeply.
“My father used to say that Feroz Khan is his right hand,” says
Abdul Wahab, who lives in Saeedabad with the rest of the family.
“He used to advise us what might be right or wrong for us. I miss him
whenever we need to settle an issue in the family.”
According to Wahab, Khan had big plans for his family. He wanted to
educate his children as much as possible, and wanted his daughter in
particular to get a religious education. “To fulfill his desire, his
daughter is acquiring higher religious education after learning the
Quran by heart,” says Wahab. Wahab is aware of how big an impact the
tragedy has left on Khan’s children.
“We can share the sorrow of our nephews and niece, but we can’t give
them the love that only a father can provide.” Feroz Khan’s story is
not unique. Thousands of people have been killed in cold blood in
Karachi over the past couple of years. What is ironic is that not one
man has been punished for street crime in the city. The murderers,
thanks to a lax law enforcement system and outdated laws, continue to
rule the streets. The rest of Karachi only looks on.
(By
Qadeer Tanoli, The News, 14/12/2008)
The
ghost projects
A
GHOST project is like a ghost school. It consumes money and resources,
benefits a small group of delinquents and does nothing for its intended
beneficiaries. With 30,000 ghost schools already under its belt,
Pakistan is now well on its way to achieving the next milestone — to
be a market leader in ghost projects. The daily newspapers carry
sickening doses of how the rich and powerful scrape away the last
pennies from projects created ostensibly for the good of the ordinary
people. The billion-dollar poverty alleviation programme only alleviated
the poverty of bureaucrats and consultants. The $350m ‘Access to
justice’ ADB loan did not make our justice system any better. A scam
of Rs3.6bn was discovered in the execution of Tawana Pakistan Project (TPP).
The former prime minister Shaukat Aziz spent over Rs1bn on 47 foreign
visits during 2004-07. The Rs16bn clean drinking water project is bogged
down by delays and complaints of unfair bidding.The KPT’s purchase and
subsequent theft of a Rs320m water fountain remains unchallenged. The
details of payment for the two chartered aeroplanes carrying 240
freeloaders to Saudi Arabia still remain unexplained. Irresponsible
expenditure coupled with heavy leakages have left the country reeling
under a formidable foreign debt of $45.6bn (not counting the latest
$7.6bn IMF loan). Clearly the problem of Pakistan is not the size of its
kitty, but the holes in the kitty.
The numerous watchdog committees like the Public Accounts Committee
(PAC), the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), the audit
department, NAB, and the NACS have not only failed to curb this menace.
They have themselves become a huge burden on the exchequer. These bodies
primarily operate in a reactive manner, often moving into action long
after the curtains have been dropped and the actors gone home.
There is little that these organisations can show in terms of their
contribution towards accountability, especially for those who yield
power or influence. On the contrary there are examples of the NAB
dropping corruption cases involving Rs500bn of the taxpayers’ money
under the influence of the NRO. It is therefore time to seriously
rethink the utility of these organisations and search for alternate ways
to plug the large holes in our leaking bucket.
How do other countries make their financial systems more accountable and
transparent? The best method is a proactive disclosure of financial
information by each department and agency. By making this information
readily available on departmental websites, ordinary citizens can
directly evaluate if public funds are being managed effectively. If not,
they can hold the government officials accountable for their actions.
The second method is the use of the Access to Information Act (at
present in the process of being revised), which enables citizens to
obtain any non-classified public information for scrutiny and
questioning.
The Canadian government offers one of the best models for financial
monitoring and accountability. It requires each department to make
quarterly disclosures on its website showing: (i) details of the travel
and hospitality expenses of ministers, parliamentary secretaries,
political staff, and senior public service employees; (ii) details of
contracts awarded; and (iii) grants and contributions that were given to
any individual or organisation (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pd-dp/gr-rg/index-eng.asp).
The system further provides protection for any one who exposes misuse of
public funds, mismanagement or a breach of a code of conduct. The
Canadian system makes it obligatory for the head of the department to
disclose the identity of the person found to have committed the
wrongdoing, any corrective action taken or the reasons why no corrective
action was taken. At the project level, Sri Lanka has developed an
excellent web-based project monitoring system that displays monthly
updated information about all foreign- and local-funded projects. The
system has 12 modules which include project profile, monthly financial
report, activity monitoring report, cash flow report, reimbursable
foreign aid, loan covenant, procurement monitoring, financial progress
on each component, project review report and comments by the public
(http://www.fabm.gov.lk/index.html).
Despite the existence of an Electronic Government Directorate (EGD), the
government seems to have little understanding of what is meant by the
term ‘e-governance’. A recent Planning Commission advertisement (Nov
22, 2008) claims that its website now contains an “interim report on
economic stabilisation with a human face, speeches of the prime
minister, projects identified for foreign assistance, and a ‘Synoptic
View’ of the Planning Commission”.
The government departments seem to consider their websites as
instruments of self-publicity (pictures of ministers, comments, speeches
and notifications) rather than putting hard facts and figures about each
project, its cost, purchases, suppliers, contractors, completion dates,
overruns and various other details of expenses. A good example of the
data that may be included for any project monitoring may be seen at
www.good-governance.com.pk , a sample website set up by a private
Pakistani citizen at a modest cost of Rs7,000.
The people of Pakistan have a right to demand an end to this unending
financial plunder. They have a right to demand an account of how and
where their money is spent. Using Public Document Rules, 2004 the
government could immediately ask every department to proactively (on its
website) provide complete and ongoing details of its projects. This
should be a precondition for the release of any further funds.
Transparent projects and an independent judiciary may be the two key
factors that could rid us of ghost projects and help us move towards a
progressive Pakistan.
(By
Naeem Sadiq, Dawn-7, 01/12/2008)
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