US delegation lauds Kamal for city’s uplift

[LahoreEstate]

By Irfan Aligi

KARACHI: The US Trade and Development Agency Country Manager for South Asia Jacob Flewelling, US Consulate Specialist Malik Muhammad Atiq and Council of Economic Affairs’s Mary Elizebeth called on City Nazim Mustafa Kamal in the evening on Saturday.

The delegation was briefed in detail about the city’s development; the members lauded Kamal for his great contribution to the development of the city and remarked that investors from across the globe are intending to come to the city because of its vast potential and geostrategic importance.

Kamal informed the delegation about the city’s mega projects and said that although various impediments were witnessed in the way of completion and maintenance of the city’s projects, the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) successfully addressed the neglected issues faced by the citizens of the city.

He told the delegation that it was a tedious job to initiate mega projects in the city, especially those relating to water and sewerage infrastructures and the Signal Free Corridors (SFC) while the land mafia had illegally occupied some of the land owned by the CDGK, which was causing problems in the initiation and completion of several projects.

The Bagh-e-Ibn-e-Qasim was one such project; previously, the park measured a total of 130-acres and was fully encroached upon, however, the CDGK recovered the land and offered a dedicated park to the citizens of the city, revealed Kamal, adding that similarly, the SFC-III was almost an impossible task but it is now nearing completion. He went on to say that the vehicle parking issues in Saddar Town was also a giant issue that the CDGK resolved
by constructing a seven-storey parking plaza there.

The CDGK invested Rs 300 billion in making Karachi into a developed city of the world while Rs 30 billion were spent on laying water and sewerage infrastructure because no arrangements of the sort were previously available despite the rapid growth of the city’s population.

It is on record that the CDGK has resolved issues that were never given importance for the past 60 years in only three and a half years, added Kamal.

It is for the first time in the history of Pakistan that the islands of the city that were deprived of the basic water and sewerage facilities for last three centuries have now been facilitated with water lines worth millions of rupees, claimed Kamal.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg12_8