Tears For My City.

On Saturday, August 20, 2022, while driving on Lawrence Road, I witnessed heaps of sewerage dirt on the road. It was an unbelievably dirty sight for a person who grew up in the full glory of the city of Lahore. I decided to park my car and gather information about this encroachment on my free and clean movement. I was told that the gutters had been cleaned by WASA (Water and Sanitation Agency) and the gutter silt was left behind as it was not part of their responsibility to remove it. Keeping roads clean in the job of the Municipal Corporation was their contention. Around 2 pm that day there was a heavy downpour, I am sure the entire dirt must have found its way back from where it was removed. In other words, it was an exercise in futility. There was a total lack of coordination with defective Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). I felt like crying for my abandoned city.

Growing up on the Mall, I had the pleasure of walking down to my school every morning across the road from the historic Lahore High Court (LHC) building. The road was sparkling clean, with garbage removed and the pavements washed. On my way back there was a smooth flow of traffic as all road work was done at night. There were no VIP movements, everyone lived happily together. In the evening, they came out for a walk or visited the parks. We played cricket and hockey in Gol Bagh (Now Naseer Bagh). There was a Ghassi Ground (Ground with slides) on the site that was encroached upon by the Punjab Government to build the Planning and Development (P and D) Department. The city was run by the Mayor from the building of the Lahore Municipal Corporation (LMC) which has now been named the Metropolitan Corporation of Lahore (MCL).

There was a time when the elected mayor ran the city. Garbage, schools, dispensaries, fire brigade, public transport, property tax etc were all controlled by the historic Town Hall located in Nasser Bagh at the lower end of Mall Road. Just one trip and the job was done. The system was centralised and well managed. As the city grew, decentralisation took place quite like the disastrous unbundling of WAPDA.

First, it was Lahore Improvement Trust (LIT) which was tasked to develop the city. From LIT came the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) and the decentralisation continued with the launch of several new departments (WASA, TEPA, PHA, LWMC etc). The big...

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