KARACHI: Deputy mayor of Karachi Arshad Vohra demanded on Friday that the Sindh government restore the bank accounts of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), frozen on Wednesday with that of other municipal bodies of Sindh, as it had virtually stalled everything operated or supervised by the province`s biggest municipality.`The Sindh government has frozen the bank accounts of all the municipal bodies in the province to settle the issues because of changes relating to delimitations.

But this freezing of accounts has badly affected our functioning,` said the deputy mayor while speaking at a `Meet the Press` programme organised by the Karachi Press Club on its premises.

He said he had approached the government for de-freezing of local councils` accounts as it was not possible for the KMC to pay salaries and pensions to its employees or meet other routine expenditures.

Dr Vohra, who is entrusted with the mayoral powers in the absence of the jailed mayor, Waseem Alchtar, conceded that the new municipal administration had bittersweet relations with the provincial government. He, however, said there were certain issues where both tiers of the government were on the same page.

`We are on board with the Sindh government`s Rs10 billion package for Karachi, but in the future, we`ll make it sure that every such package is designed with our active participation,` he said.

`We`ll be fighting for funds against theprovincial and the federal governments because it is Karachi`s right to have a modern outlook and cleaner setting,` said Dr Vohra.

He said the Sindh Revenue Board was successfully collecting more than Rs60bn as tax on services annually and `98 per cent of them are being collected from Karachi` thus the city deserved afair chunk of such collections for its beautification.

`We need many uplift packages like the ongoing Rs10bn Sindh government package for Karachi. At present, we have demanded that the government grant only Rs4bn to theKMC to clean the whole metropolis`.

He said the city had virtually become a heap of garbage as `garbage is either being thrown into drains, or being used for reclamation of the land from the sea`.

`The cleaning of drains is urgently needed because garbage has turned them into a mire where many children have already lost their lives.

He criticised the government`s decision of separating the Karachi Development Authority from the KMC`s administrative control. However, he resolved that all theKMC departments directly linlced with public service would remain located in the Civic Centre despite the ongoing controversies between the two agencies.

He said the world was ready to invest in Karachi. `Investors are coming to me with the desire to invest in the city, but we have to have powers to get them convinced. The KMC has limited powers.

Dr Vohra said municipal bodies in Karachi were lifting and disposing of 4,000 tonnes of garbage daily in an attempt to clean the city despite the fact that it was not their job and that duty had been assigned to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board.

`We have requested the Sindh government to provide us funds to enable us to make the metropolis cleaner.

The deputy mayor said the new leadership of the city had assumed its charge less than two months bacl<, yet it performed its duties `excellently` during Eidul Azha and Muharram.

`Our staff lifted some 1.7 million pieces of offal of sacrificial animals and disposedthem of. We worked well during Muharram as well.

He said the KMC was carrying out an operation against encroachments in the city during which hundreds of concrete structures from main city drains had already been removed.

Regarding revenue recovery, he said a thorough campaign had been launched to recover dues amounting to billions of rupees from commercial consumers and the provincial government had been approached for more powers.

Dr Vohra appealed to the citizens to join hands with its leadership to turn Karachi into a modern city.