Have a look at the latest population update - Current population: 14.5 million (considered to be more than that), Area: 3,527 sq. km, Population increase: 5% per year. Oh my God, how will we have to plan our city? Does anyone think that at such a rate of pop. increase (take in account the current pop. as well) Karachi will be able to accomodate that many people properly. Is there any other way for many people to live their lives other than in slum belts and poverty? Also take in account the growing rates of expenses and pollution. I’m against abortions and all that stuff but perhaps a little sexual abstinence will help to stabilize the situation; we definitely need to take some efficient city planning actions.
- Restrict land owning to one plot per lineage (maternal lineage of a person, starting from great grandfather, then grandfather and so on). It’s okay if you add more habitable floors to your house and so all family members can live peacefully and in privacy.
- Encourage condominium/apartment living! Make tall residential buildings so we don’t have to clear more land for living space. In general, we really need efficient space conservation.
- Do something to reduce pollution. Plant greenery (big trees in particular) here and there; promote land owners to plant their gardens with big trees and help themselves. Not only does this better the quality of living it also stabilizes the natural beauty of our city. Also, don’t forget to register any kind of fuel-using vehicles and mandate frequent check-ups on them. Recycling should be vigorously promoted as well.
- Encourage public transportation. Boost up the bills for personal transportation (cars, motorcycles etc.) so that people are automatically discouraged from using cars. And for God’s sake implement an uniform, organized, proper, pollution-free public transportation system. This might also encourage walking and cycling.
- Increase the standard of public education. Encourage people to regularly pay their taxes and discourage private education… since many of the low-income people of the city can’t afford private education and many good teachers go for private schools in search of a better income. Also, definitely do offer some health care plans.
- Now last but definitely not least–increase job opportunities! There are definitely lots of things need to be done (mostly by labor people) so why not recruit some of the low-income people of the city (via volunteers or similar campaign) and give them some labor job (environmental cleaning, painting buildings etc.) for a decent salary (at this point even 5,000-10,000 Rs./month will be decent for them). Give them accomodation in a decent building free for the first year, and let them pay all their bills (gas, electric, water, residence) for the second and third year, this way no one suffers and do make them sign a contract that they live in the building for at least 3 or so years so they don’t take advantage of you!
Basically the reason I so highly stressed the last point is that we do need lots of things to get going–from construction to roadside planting–and we have the people for it who are otherwise earning by illegitimate shoddy businesses. We just need to organize all those people. But one question still remains to be answered - Where will the money come from? Zakaat, charity if they are well organized… and I think we really should impose some kind of a special “poor people” tax on wealthy people so they can actually make some good use of their money.
I know that I missed out many topics but I just wrote what came immediately in my mind and what I felt were the most important in my view. However, a sinking feeling that I have is that unless we take these basic steps… Karachi might be turning into a ghetto.
