Speaking at a seminar on 'Karachi's desperate need for effective municipal laws', organised by Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) at its Vicky Zeitlin Media Library on Thursday, he said that presently an attempt was made to make some thing called as a 'master plan', but that was grossly inadequate. "Planning is a continuous process and cannot be packaged into one time assignment," he noted.
He emphasised that land use and development control must be enforced, as at present land was freely traded as a commodity, which was a flawed practice.
"Land is precious asset and must be used for the larger benefit of the citizens and the city. If proper land allocations for major urban functions are judiciously made and enforced, then a sizeable improvement can be achieved in urban governance," he said.
"For instance, the city desperately needs a new urban road running from north to south to offset existing vehicular congestion. Limited opportunities exist to procure that type of land space due to uncontrolled commercialisation all around the city. Municipal governance is tightly controlled and influenced by federal and provincial administration at times in quasi-illegal manners. Legal and administrative autonomy is a must for the City District Government Karachi and other district governments for smooth city functioning," he observed.
Dr Noman said issues of katchi abadies' regularisation needed legal and administrative streamlining. The existing provisions were obsolete and did not account for the emerging ground realities. Infrastructural provisions need a specific realignment for service provisions, he stressed.
Identifying water supply, sewerage, transport and housing for urban poor as most important issues in cities like Karachi, he said KWSB needed a re-structuring, bulk supply to be managed by the it, while distribution and revenue recovery to be decentralised to towns.
Existing sewers and Nullas need to be consolidated with treatment plants built at their discharge ends. There should be control on emerging number of motor cars and subsidy should be given for public transport.
More bypasses should be developed to route out goods transport, urban railways be resurrection in relevance to ground realities of neighbourhoods, effective traffic surveillance and management be ensured. For housing, credit support should be offered to poor for accessing land, he suggested.