KARACHI: Chairman Businessmen Group (BMG) & Former President Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI) Zubair Motiwala has fervently appealed the federal and provincial governments to pay special attention to the woes of Karachi which has largely been ignored by both the governments that resulted in further worsening the already awful infrastructure all over Karachi where the roads, sewerage and rainwater drainage lines have totally wrecked and the city faces severe gas, electricity and water shortages.
Speaking at the 60th Annual General Meeting (AGM), Chairman BMG said that not a single civic service was properly available in Karachi which are usually available in any other cosmopolitan city of the world yet this city continues to contribute 67 percent revenue to the national exchequer while more than 55 percent of the total exports were also proceeding from Karachi.
Vice Chairmen BMG Tahir Khaliq, Haroon Farooki and Jawed Bilwani, General Secretary BMG AQ Khalil, newly elected President KCCI Muhammad Idrees, Senior Vice President Abdul Rehman Naqi, Vice President Qazi Zahid Hussain, retiring President Shariq Vohra, retiring SVP Saqib Goodluck, retiring VP Shamsul Islam Khan, Chairman Special Committee for Small Traders Majeed Memon, Former Presidents, Managing Committee members and a large number of General Body members attended the AGM.
“Karachi is usually compared with Mumbai but the local Government of Mumbai receives a huge budget of Indian Rs436 billion whereas Karachi, despite being a more complex and widely spread city, receives a meager amount Rs52 billion only”, Chairman BMG said and asked, “How is this city going to progress, compete or even survive with such a small budget?”
He particularly stressed the need to construct the Karachi bypass, which must connect Karachi Port with Lyari Expressway and Northern Bypass so that all the heavy vehicles heading towards the upcountry could directly land at the highways without touching the city’s roads.
