It’s one of the toughest jobs in the world, Mayor of Karachi. Whatever you do, you can never make everyone happy. It’s also a thankless job, because whatever happens that is bad in the city, you will be blamed for it. And whatever good you do or try to do will generally go unnoticed, with little or no praise, the usual refrain being: “Oh, so what, he’s just doing his job.”

I happened to meet Karachi’s Mayor, Barrister Murtaza Wahab, some days ago. He is already two-and-a-half years into his four-year term as mayor of one of the world’s biggest, most complex and most challenging cities. Karachi is not just a megacity; it is a constantly expanding organism with decades of accumulated neglect, overlapping authorities, fractured governance, and expectations that far exceed the resources available to any one office.

I asked him if he plans to run for mayor again. His response was characteristically restrained. He said this was a decision for the party and that if he was entrusted with the task again, he would be there to serve. It was not the response of a politician obsessed with the next election, but of someone focused on the job at hand.

Our conversation naturally turned to the deeply tragic manhole incidents that have dominated headlines in recent weeks. The Mayor said that he, his administration, and his team at the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) were doing everything possible to prevent such incidents from recurring. The scale of the problem, however, is immense, and so is the responsibility.

Karachi’s sheer size often gets lost in the emotion of these tragedies.........

© The Friday Times