Wake up Mr. Qaim Ali Shah. Will you?
The Chief Minister of the province of Sindh, Mr. Qaim Ali Shah is a well-known personality and hence needs no introduction. There is a long list of failures that the politician Mr. Shah has woefully attached to his name. It seems like sweet irony that the moment I seemed to have been reading about Dubai’s recent project of constructing houses on water, I happen to be mulling over Karachi’s water crises.
Sadly, our ruling elite is completely oblivious of the current era humanity resides in. When the entire world is out burning the midnight oil and exceeding in breakthroughs of all sorts, Karachites are here pining for that one more drop of water. Karachi is facing a water shortage of around 700 million gallons a day. As if electricity shortage was not enough for the masses. People are oblivious as to how the “tanker mafia” is still able to get hold of water and making immense profits from the sale of water at high prices.
Till the date of this article, I surmise that no action has been taken against the culprits and no serious efforts have been made to resolve this issue within a timely constraint. The issue is likely to only fester like a wound in the near future, keeping in view the current interest level of the government. To add to the misery, Karachi water board has failed to control the underground water supply from being stolen. Even if the government were able to stop this stealing, it would have provided some relief to the people.
It is pertinent to mention the “not-so-serious” efforts made by the chief minister a few months back regarding the deaths of children in Thar. Mr. Shah went to Thar; after around 250 children died due to malnutrition, in a convoy of 95 cars. Clearly you need to be ashamed to devour such a lavish meal in an area where children are dying of malnutrition. When he came back he had figured out the reasons for the deaths. While addressing the Sindh assembly, he said, “people are not dying of hunger but of poverty”. What else could we have expected from the octogenarian chief minister who was reported to have been catching Z’s and counting sheep during the Thar briefing? In any other part of the world, had the same number of animals died, the outcry would have been enough to ridicule the chief minister to the point where it would have been impossible for him to remain on his position.
As a solution to this problem, PTI in its recent press conference has demanded to give the water board under the command of rangers. I don’t agree that this is a wise solution. So to bring things into perspective, when we have an Earthquake don’t worry the army will save us; in the event of a flood the army has got our backs; when Chinese want security, again, we resort to the army. And now that we have no water, guess what the solution is. I’ll give you a hint: it starts with an ‘a’ and ends with a ‘y’, yes the army. Since the military is responsible for all of our other problems, why not hand them the issue of electricity as well? There is absolutely no doubt about military’s competence and their ability to give results within a limited time but then the question arises why do we need a political government anyway? Just let the army replace the redundancy of the government.
We see some governments being shameless, some incompetent and some corrupt but sadly Sindh’s provincial government possesses all three qualities. They seem to have better things to do than to actually perform their constitutional duties, those duties for which they have been duly elected. This is not even a favor that the people of Karachi are asking for; it’s their basic right. It’s not a luxury they are begging for: it’s an absolute necessity. The government is rather busy, vociferously defending Mr. Zardari and threatening Mr. Zulfiqar Mirza through fabricated FIRs. However it doesn’t have time for problems of its people. It is due to this attitude that the party got such overwhelming response and such awesome performance in the cantonment board elections (sarcasm intended). With the continued good governance I don’t see how results will be any different in the upcoming local bodies elections.
There is news of upcoming strikes and protests in coming days. PTI and MQM have also threatened to join the masses in their protest to get water. It is high time that the chief minister takes this wake up call seriously. For the party, which was once a symbol representation of the poor and deprived, is now perceived as an enemy of the poor and needy. It is saddening to see a party, which never faltered despite continuous efforts of dictators, is now at the brink of its downfall due to sheer incompetence, lack of commitment and will. I hope this request for Mr. Shah will not fall on deaf ears or merely be shrugged off. If the Chief Minster’s incognizance continues to persist it wouldn’t be wrong for the Prime Minister to intervene. The Government must take appropriate action to counter such incidences of incompetence in the near future.