Rawalpindi: No quick solution to city’s problems

[Naveed Yaseen]

Ibne Ahmad
The huge failure of Pindi city fathers has not been their wrong priorities, as has often been accused, but their lack of vision.

Experiences of the past should have permitted this city to plan for the next several decades, not just to give the impression of looking towards the future, but also to deal with troubles of the past. Instead, we mostly got the customary hodgepodge of some more planning and some crisis management.

A variety of civic leaders has charged that instead of focusing on the basics of city services, the city government bends to special interest groups obsessed with making money, and is seduced by the thoughtless vision of development. The budget crisis, the land mafia, the annual painful downtown flood disasters, and the deterioration of basic services like power, sanitation and water supply are offered as evidence.

In fact, other than requiring a more consistent vision, the city has two basic problems. The offensive development during the last eight years plagued every facet of the city, from services to traffic. The fact that the pro-development forces blame such troubles on the environmental community is a sad story. Trying to look after the quality of life and the environment, and to control development so that city services could expand in the most coherent patterns, became extremely complex time-and-money-consuming tasks, given the developers’ excessive ambition for construction.

It’s ridiculous to argue that rather than thinking about the past issues, the city should have just thrown up its hands and tried to match services to disproportionate and disorganised development. But the more devastating problem is that citizens do not feel like paying for the quality of government services they demand.

This is comprehensible, as everybody already feels overtaxed, and everything is so much more expensive, but it is central to many existing budgetary problems. For example, almost in all kinds of social spending, chopping of funding is badly needed. Some feel the government on every level has simply gotten too big, and by cutting fat, refocusing priorities, and rethinking government’s responsibilities, we can make these budget problems largely vanish.

Others argue that the government is under-performing, but we don’t have the stomach or the wallet to give it the amount of money it needs. Protecting the environment and maintaining a healthy downtown are in the long-term best interests of the city. Apart from controversial expenditures, most of what the city government has done makes sense.

The city just can’t afford the best possible services, outstanding roads, water supply system, an effective garbage disposal and the day-to-day running of the city, all the while planning for the future. Every organisation has a few projects they would cut, as they might negatively impact a part of the community.

The reality is that the city is sprawling out in every direction, resulting in an increasing demand for services. There is no quick-and-easy solution to the city’s problems. A long-term plan with a real commitment would have made an enormous difference but wouldn’t have compensated for the budget shortfall. The vast majority of the city budget is non-controversially well spent. There is another chunk, more controversial that I would argue, is equally well spent. The crushing problem is development and demand. This, coupled with the budget shortfall, leaves the city in an agonising position.

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