Spencer Eye Hospital in Lyari has reopened, and patients can get free care through the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. Nobody sensible begrudges that. But Bilawal Bhutto Zardari did not stop at the hospital. As reported, he declared the new-province question closed, accused federal representatives of spreading hatred in Karachi, and complained of inflation, joblessness and crushing electricity bills. Then he said he would like to see all of Lyari run on solar power.

Read that again. The party that has governed Sindh without a break since 2008 is complaining about Sindh’s state.

The party that wrote the rules

The 18th Amendment of 2010, which the PPP counts among its proudest achievements, made health, municipal services and urban infrastructure provincial subjects. The NFC Award gave provinces a larger share of national resources. The PPP wanted the powers, took the powers and has held them ever since. A party cannot cut the ribbon on that arrangement and then point at Islamabad when it fails to deliver. When water runs short, roads break up and hospitals decay, the first door to knock on is in Karachi.

That is why the “spreading hatred” line sits so badly. Federal politicians may well owe Karachi explanations of their own. But a citizen asking why his city is in this condition is not spreading hatred; he is asking a question. Renaming questions as hostility is politics’ oldest dodge. A government that trusts its record simply answers.

A promise to the courts, answered with a majority

The same amendment inserted Article 140A, which obliges every province to hand political, administrative and financial authority to elected local governments. In February 2022, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed, called it a mandatory obligation. It struck down Sections 74 and 75(1) of the 2013 Sindh Local Government Act, barred the province from starting new projects in the local government domain without the local government’s consent, and ordered that local governments receive their Provincial Finance Commission share with no arrears.

How did the PPP respond? In September, the Sindh Assembly passed the Sindh Local Government Amendment Bill 2026 by majority vote while opposition lawmakers tore up copies of it in protest. The Jamaat-e-Islami said the new law still does not give chairmen adequate powers, and a PTI member accused the provincial government of contempt of a Supreme Court judgment. The opposition fought hardest over the provision the PPP insisted on: keeping sitting mayors and chairmen in office as administrators until fresh elections, which it then pushed through with its numerical majority.

Nobody forced those amendments through. A party with a majority chose to use it, on the exact question the Supreme Court told it to settle in the city’s favour. MQM Pakistan lawmakers have pointed out that the PPP’s own 2008 manifesto promised to devolve local government powers. Eighteen years later, the manifesto is still waiting.

Yes, Karachi has an elected mayor, and he is from the PPP. But a title is not authority. If control over water, solid waste, and the master plan for a city of more than 20 million is reportedly still being bargained over in provincial committee rooms, he looks more like a spokesman than its manager. The party that preaches cooperation should let its own mayor manage.

Full stop on the province, full speed on what?

The Sindh Assembly has placed a full stop on the question of new provinces. Magnificent. Eighteen years of water shortages, broken roads and decaying hospitals, and the one thing this government has ever delivered with perfect speed is a full stop. One wonders what else it might finish if it applied that urgency to the sentences that matter to Karachi, the ones about water, roads and hospitals, which seem to trail off mid-thought every budget season.

And what of the full speed? Mr Bilawal is the frontman of a family that has run Sindh for eighteen years, and his cabinet is a fine collection of gentlemen who have never been seen in a hurry to fix a pipe, yet are never far from signing a contract. Ask anyone at a Karachi tea stall what a Sindh minister’s portfolio really is, and watch them smile. Something about percentages. Something about files that move faster when they are fed. Of course, it is all gossip, and gossip is not evidence, so we would never say it ourselves. Let the ministers prove the tea stalls wrong. Publish every contract award. Publish every audit response. Publish, project by project, what was spent, what was built and who was paid. If the books are as clean as the ribbons are shiny, it will be the easiest press conference of their lives.

Funny how the ministers who can announce a scheme in thirty seconds always need thirty years to show the receipts.

Bills, solar and arithmetic

Electricity tariffs are set federally, and households feel the strain. Neither point is in serious dispute. But the chairman put the remedy in the province’s hands, so the numbers are fair game.

Sindh has announced 275,000 solar systems this fiscal year at about Rs18 billion, with a subsidised financing scheme for middle-income families alongside. As Dawn reported, the chief minister was earlier told that the province has roughly 2.6 million households off the grid. Even if every system reached one of them, the programme would cover about one in ten. Earlier reports describe a typical system as enough for a fan and three bulbs. That matters to a family with no electricity. It does little for a Karachi household staring at a heavy grid bill.

A wish, fifteen months late

The chairman says he wishes to solarise all of Lyari. Yet in July 2025 the provincial energy minister had already inaugurated a “Solar Homes” project there, presented as part of the chairman’s vision of a fully solar-powered Sindh, and a PPP assembly member promised to expand it to other Lyari neighbourhoods in the coming days.

Fifteen months on, the people of Lyari are offered a wish. How many homes are done? Which neighbourhood comes next, and when? A government that can stage an inauguration can publish a progress report, and the public is entitled to one.

The test

Declaring the province question closed does not close the grievances behind it. They concern water, roads, hospitals, bills, and who gets to decide. The PPP can respond. It can give real power to elected local governments, in line with Article 140A and the Supreme Court’s judgment. It can release the local share of provincial funds on time. It can put water, waste and planning under one accountable city authority. It can publish contract awards and solar delivery figures house by house.

Hospitals will keep being restored, and ribbons will keep being cut. But a ribbon is not a ledger, and eighteen years is long enough to be asked for the ledger.

The post Eighteen Years in Power, the PPP Still Owes Karachi Answers appeared first on Daily Pakistan English News.

Last week, PPP leader Najmi Alam reportedly said that if Sindh gets new administrative units, the Karachi mayor should be handed DHA and the cantonments. After 18 years of PPP rule in Sindh, this is not a proposal. It is a dare.

Let me do what Mr Alam apparently didn’t: count what the mayor already runs.

Murtaza Wahab heads the KMC, which includes the fire brigade, chairs the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, and sits on the governing bodies of KDA, MDA and LDA. Around him sit provincial bodies like the SBCA, also in PPP hands. Mr Alam knows this machinery from the inside, having served as vice-chairman of the water board himself. So, in the spirit of a fair audit: name one institution among them that has become better under this mayor. I’ll wait.
The fire department. On the night of 17 January, a fire began at Gul Plaza at 10:14 pm. The first engine left at 10:27 pm. It burned for roughly 24 hours. More than 70 people died, and about 1,200 shops were reduced to ash, in the city’s worst fire since Baldia in 2012. And what does a city of 20 million-plus have to fight such fires? 35 fire stations, by KMC’s own count. In September, fire gutted the mayor’s own office at KMC headquarters. An administration that could not protect its own chamber from a kitchen short circuit now wants Defence.

The gutters. I’ll be blunt: the mayor cannot even keep a lid on a manhole. At least 22 people died in Karachi’s open manholes and drains between January and November last year, eight of them children aged ten or younger. In 2023, the toll reportedly rose to 68. The mayor says the city has 245,000 manholes and that it installed 88,000 new covers last year, leaving roughly 157,000 still to go. A cover costs around Rs700 in the market. After a toddler died, KMC blamed the BRT project, which blamed the water corporation, which said the drain wasn’t its jurisdiction. Karachi’s children keep falling through the gap between your institutions.

University Road. The Red Line was launched in 2022 and was meant to be done by 2024. The deadline slid to 2025, then 2026, and now sits at June 2027, on a road that carries one to 1.5 million vehicles every day. The first contractor was removed, and the FWO took over to finish the job. In August, the senior minister promised the road would be fully motorable by 15 September. On 27 September, he apologised and promised to complete it in two months. Ask any student at Karachi University or NED how that feels. Five years is not a project. It is a sentence.

Lyari. This is the PPP’s own stronghold. In July, four-year-old Shavez drowned in the Lyari River and a young man, Gulab, died trying to save him. Opposition leaders say the major drains remain choked despite a municipal budget of Rs63 billion and billions earmarked for cleaning. Water shortage and uncollected garbage in Lyari are complaints older than some of the councillors who campaign there. If you cannot deliver in your own heartland after 18 years, why should Karachi trust you with its most expensive neighbourhoods?

Now compare. I am not romanticising DHA. Its drainage has its own sins. But walk its streets and then walk Lyari’s lanes. The difference in sweeping, lighting, and basic upkeep is visible to anyone with eyes. Whatever you think of the cantonment boards, they deliver something the mayor hasn’t: maintained roads and cleaned lanes. Even the mayor appears to know it. When he promised DHA a 10 million gallons-a-day water pipeline, he called the Cantonment Board Clifton “very forthcoming” and brought in the FWO to build it. The man who wants to absorb the cantonments is already borrowing their capacity.

Mr Alam has asked voters in PS-110, the Clifton–Defence side of Karachi South, for their votes twice. He knows exactly what a well-kept lane looks like, and exactly how far it is from Lyari’s. The distance between the two is not geography. It is 18 years of PPP governance.

Defenders will say the mayor lacks the powers to deliver. Critics do argue that the 2013 local government law left Karachi’s mayor weak and gave provincial bodies like the SBCA and the waste management board the real control. But whose law is that? And the PPP’s other line is that the Gul Plaza lease dates back to MQM-era mayors: the chief minister blamed the mayor who approved the lease in 1991. You cannot plead powerlessness for today’s failures and ask for more power in the same breath.

Small administrative units are a legitimate debate, and the more local the unit, the more accountable it should be. That is why failed institutions should go to someone who can run them, not the other way around. Fix the manholes. Finish University Road. Clean Lyari. Then ask for Defence. And, Mr Alam, a modest invitation: you and the mayor are welcome to walk Lyari’s lanes this monsoon, with the cameras on.

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