THERE is no shortage of flyovers and underpasses in Karachi. Yet, vehicular traffic has always been a bit of a nuisance for the authorities and citizens alike. To be fair to the city administrators, they have tried their utmost to tackle the issue... to little avail.

For example, on Feb 5, 1970 a new bridge over Gujjar Nullah on Nazimabad B Road connecting First Chowrangi with Liaquatabad Post Office was opened to traffic. It brought the total number of new bridges built during the previous couple of months to three the other two were also on the same storm-water drain at points diminishing the distance between Federal B Area and North Nazimabad.

Two more bridges on Gujjar Nullah connecting Federal B Area with North Nazimabad were in advanced stages of construction and were likely to be operational within three months. The new one was built by the KarachiMunicipal Corporation (KMC) at a cost of a little over Rs600,000. It was about 44-foot wide. The idea was that with its construction, traffic from the Liaquatabad Post Office to Manghopir Road via Muslim League Quarters would relieve the congestion on the other adjoining roads.

The KMC at the time, by the way, was pretty efficient in trying to fix the traffic situation. On Feb 3, it was announced that the corporation had taken up the widening and renovation of University Road lying within its jurisdiction. The project involved a mile-long section of the road from the Shaheed-i-Millat roundabout to the western limits of Gulshan-i-lqbal. Once the project was ready, University Road in its fulldength of six-miles from the roundabout to the campus would be 120-foot wide.

It seems that the KMC was a popular administrative unit when Pakistan hadn`t been dismembered, impressing officials representing other similar bodies in the country with its proactive approach towork. On Feb 4, Dacca Municipality Administrator Maj S. A. Khan Sur and Chief Engineer S. A. Wahab visited the KMC`s treatment plant No 1 in SITE Area, Spencer`s Eye Hospital, IBM Section Location, KMC main building, Liaquat Hall Library and the aquarium at Clifton.

On the cultural front, on Feb 6, 51 student poets, including 19 girls, participated in a poetry competition sponsored by Radio Pakistan, Karachi, on the fifth day of its Students Week programme. The first prize went to Naqqash Kazmi of Karachi University; second to Durdana Anjum of APWA College; and the third prize was given to Noor Shama of the Government Women`s College. Ashraf Shad of the Urdu Law College was awarded a special prize, while the [overall] trophy was won by the University of Karachi.

The judges of the competition were: Rais Amrohvi, Tabbish Dehlavi and Shams Zuberi.

The same day, an exhibition of paintings by G. B. Gandhi, A. Z.Mohsin, Mumtaz Butt and Iftikhar Hussain at the Pak-American Cultural Centre impressed the critics with their `individuality`. They were of the view that it`s good to see that unlike most other young painters, the four recently graduated art students had made up their mind about both the content and the style of their painting.

The exhibition included 15 artworks by each of them, and `it was easy to tell them apart from a distance`.

That week, the city`s philosophers too were in the news, but for not a happy reason. On Feb 7, a meeting of the Philosophical Society University of Karachi was held to express condolences over the death of Bertrand Russell, the eminent British philosopher, mathematician and humanist. The meeting was presided over by Dr Manzoor Ahmad. In his speech, he pointed out that Russell was one of those rare minds which combined a passionate life in search of truth and their desire to have peace and happiness for fellow beings.