SOME LYNCHING PLEASE
Most of Karachi has been plunged into darkness for the last 48 hours with the not-so-recently- privatized KESC having failed to pay their bills to WAPDA, PEPCO, and NTDC to the tune of 13.7 billion rupees. KESC contends that it is owed 11.3 billion rupees from various government agencies. A classic debtor argument for those...
POWER CRIMES
On Sunday, the entire nation got a slight taste of what it is like to live in Karachi when power to 75% of the country was disrupted due to a “technical” fault. Secretary Ashfaq Mehmood offered an explanation by doing what people like him always do – pointing out that similar outages occurred in 1965...
THREE INCHES OF INCOMPETENCE
The last rains Karachi received on Thursday afternoon measured a total of 91 mm at the highest point which roughly translates into 3.5 inches. This is roughly one fourth of a foot, and I think everyone will agree that this is not a whole lot of rain. Alas these 3.5 inches was the straw which...
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
While General Musharraf tours the United States to improve Pakistan’s image, shore up foreign investment for Pakistan, and to hold important meetings with all and sundry; all is not well on the home front. Pakistan’s largest and only metropolitan city Karachi, which is also its’ commercial, financial, and industrial center, came to look like a...
NOT IN MY BACK YARD (NIMBY)
Imagine the Pakistani Consulate in New York requests the State Department to allocate it an amenity plot which is meant to be a park in a prime residential and commercial area. The State Department sends the request to Mayor Bloomberg’s office in New York. I hope you can guess the outcome of such a request. ...
