KARACHI: Chairman Businessmen Group (BMG) & Former President Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI) Siraj Kassam Teli, while warmly welcoming federal government’s resolve to cleanup Karachi, stated that the business & industrial community highly appreciates Prime Minister Imran Khan’s move to engage National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and Frontier Work Organization (FWO) in the cleanup operation in Karachi which would certainly yield positive results and provide some relief to the perturbed citizens of this city who face immense hardships whenever the city undergoes torrential rainfalls.
“It has just been two days since commencement of cleanup drive and the difference is visible thanks to the hard work being performed by NDMA and FWO who have been working aggressively and we hope maximum possible cleanup is done before the next rainfall”, he added.
“We are really delighted to see that after a lapse of 20 to 25 years, the current federal government has decisively stepped in to do something good for Karachi as all other political parties, who have remained in power during the last twenty years in all the tiers of the government, have ignored this city which is the basic reason for the disaster being suffered by Karachiites”, Siraj Teli said, adding that all the political parties, who remained in power since 90s and till date, deserve no sympathies at all as they have done a lot of injustices to Karachi by completely ignoring all the infrastructure related issues.
Chairman BMG urged that in order to maintain cleanliness in Karachi, this city should immediately be handed over to Pakistan Army for a period of next five years so that all the infrastructure issues could be resolved in a transparent manner under army’s supervision.
He was of the opinion that the cleanup drive should not be remained confine to just clearing the chocked nullahs only but every single nook and corner of Karachi has to be completely cleansed from garbage on war footing basis and it must be an ongoing process till the entire city is completely cleaned. “Effective Strategies and mechanism have to be defined which must ensure that the city’s cleanliness is maintained at any cost in future which can only be done under army’s supervision”, he added.
Siraj Teli further pointed out that after cleaning up the city from garbage, the NDMA and FWO should be given the task to rebuild the infrastructure, particularly the dilapidated road network of Karachi. “The roads and sewerage lines in all seven industrial zones of Karachi are in a pathetic condition, creating a lot of hardships for businessmen and industrialists who have to suffer severe losses because of the damages to their goods in transit and sometimes due to delays caused by traffic jams due to broken roads”, he added.
He stressed that as Karachiites and the business & industrial community have totally lost their trust over the capabilities of local administration which has failed miserably to minimize the hardships being faced by Karachiites hence, it has become inevitable to hand over Karachi to the army on top priority otherwise, the devastating situation in Karachi would have a disastrous impact on the country’s economy keeping in view the mammoth contribution of more than 70 percent revenue being generated from Karachi. “This city generates the highest revenue hence it deserve preferential treatment.”
Chairman BMG said, “Keeping in view the dedication and sincerity being exhibited by Prime Minister Imran Khan, we hope that he would pay attention to the plights of Karachiites and give go ahead to handing over this city to the army for next five years which is the only way to practically pull this city out of infrastructure crises and other issues.”
