According to this news report gov. has approved 51 projects including the KCR. This project is pending for last 30+ years now and before we see it on ground GOD knows how many more years the public in karachi will suffer. “The KCR project is expected to be executed in three years at a cost of Rs52.372 billion with a foreign component of Rs39.257 billion. The 50 km railway project will have 21 underpasses and overhead bridges and 23 stations in the city. The Circular Railway would carry 700,000 passengers daily through 246 trains.”

Other : urbanpk

Image : Adnan Zafar

A very interesting development has taken place where the World Wildlife Fund Pakistan and Dawood Corporation in Karachi have signed a memorandum to collaborate for the establishment of a regular beach cleaning mechanism at Sandspit Beach.  Soon the City District Government Karachi will also be taken into confidence for the proper disposal of collected solid waste.

Sandpit beach is a globally nesting site of two endangered species of marine turtle, the Green turtle and the Olive Ridley, that visit the beach for laying eggs between June to December each year.  Due to the pollution the number of egg laying nests has continued to decline over the past twenty years

News credit – The Nation

CDGK has done excellent job by continuing with the development work even with a political chaos. Jail Road leading towards Hassan Square is one such example. While one can definitely argue about the standard of the work (especially flyovers) one should appreciate the efforts put in by CDGK to give Karachi a green look.
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After a long long effort to control traffic flow within the Defence Stadium circle area, the DHA has, after complete lack of success, launched its final assault on vehicles that break the traffic flow pattern that has been set up to eliminate congestion in the area.

These tyre killers will puncture the tyres of cars that come from the wrong direction, while allowing the correct drivers to pass through.

I spoke with an engineer there, who told me that during the past week, DHA had received 4 complaints from angry drivers who lost their tyres to this device. Its interesting how people can call up and complain about something thats a consequence of violating the law!

The City Government has today launched an initiative of enrolling volunteers to help manage the city’s affairs better.

The drive is aimed at creating a culture of caring for the city amongst its citizens as against the current trend of complaints and lack of ownership to the city’s issues. Issues like olunteering for traffic management, identifying and managing cleanliness issues, helping keeping the city green etc are on top of the list.

Enrollments will commence from tomorrow morning at Civic Centre. All people who enroll for this will be given a “city owner” badge and will become part of its coordnated database.

Come people! wake up! the city needs you. This is your chance to help make things better!

It was a morning set to impress. The a hall of a hotel in Karachi was buzzing with activity aw we were all ready for another milestone to be laid in the history achievements in the It industry of Pakistan.  

The event was the launch of CIO Pakistan Magazine, CIO is the world’s largest business technology leadership magazine, printed in over 35 countries around the world and will now be printing locally to help highlight and support our local technology Industry. Besides the launch the event also included CIO “Technology Pioneer Awards” the recognize the excellence and the achievements of the best amongst the leaders of the local technology and telecommunication industry.

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Since a few days I have been hearing about the recent deployment of CCTV cameras throughout the city by the city mayor Mustafa Kamal. The deployment of CCTV cameras at select traffic corridors of Karachi (and soon throughout the city) is to serve multiple purposes ranging from traffic monitoring to policing the area while it may also help catch any corrupt officials who may want siphon off innocent citizens. The whole project took only 6 months to complete and hopefully if used consistently will definitely help improve the security situation in Karachi.

The system is also said to have face recognition software, RFID software, and is connected to the NADRA database. What caught my attention was this booth recently (?) erected in front of Metropole boating a banner afixed to the top, which on afterthought might not be linked together, it generally read “Future Eye Inc. You are being watched CCTV & Network …..” I honestly have no idea what this booth has to do with CCTV deployment (?), is it to create awareness or does this booth have another purpose.

CNN:Airspan Networks a leading provider of WiMAX broadband wireless access networks, announced that City District Government Karachi (CDGK) in Pakistan has successfully deployed Airspan’s 4.9 GHz WiMAX solutions for its IP Closed Circuit Television Video surveillance project in Karachi. CDGK is committed to video surveillance of all major city roads. Airspan is partnering with GCS a U.S. based telecommunications integrator that provides wireless video solutions in Pakistan

Kids born today due to activities at Do Darya (two rivers, Phase 8, DHA) will surely be a living, futuristic legacy of Gen (r ) Musharraf’s rule.

How? Read below.

Musharraf once announced that women shall be equal to men and that they must receive similar respect as men get (which men, he never told us). Therefore, he announced his famous bill, called Women Bill. The bill was a landmark achievement in the face of strong opposition from mullahs and other tullahs of Parliament and Senate. It said, among other things, freedom of expression (sexual, religious, etc). And lo and behold, people were out dating, doing things, touching, touching more, doing more things, and as we shall know after 20 years, doing lot of things not included in the bill.

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Hello folks. Oh sorry. Asalam u Alikum Ya Taliban & Ya Osama bhai and other Jihadis.

MQM chiefs have reportedly informed govt. of Pakistan (aka PPP and lots of coalition partners) that the threat of Talibanization to Karachi looks imminent. Mildly put, it means that we will all be Taliban sporting lot of things you see at National Geographic programs which are on Afghanistan. You will also like to blow up school girls, like Mama Parsi, and other brilliant places of education; you would also like to keep doctors away from your wives (one won’t do); you would also like to throw away your camera as photography is not much appreciated by them (never mind Osama bhai always gives video interviews). You would, if in case we have MQM replaced with Talibans and Al-Qaeda, also have to replace Bhai Altaf’s photographs, posters, and 90 from Karachi. In place of them we would need lots of Osama shots: Osama praying, Osama marrying yet another woman, Osama praying again, Osama tapping suicide bombers, and Osama doing everything else. Lot of printing jobs would be offered, but to those having flourishing beards, amamas (Arabic term for turban), and wives in tow (I think Jamatias will take away all the jobs!)

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I am horrified by the voting being done presently at the following website:

http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/voting_result.php?id=51

It belongs to Pakistan Christian Post and the polling asks this from its voters:

Christian population is 18% of Punjab but deprived of resources of province and state. Do you support demand of Separate Christian Province on division of Punjab?

To which 71% have said yes while 29% have said no. What kind of govt. is this which cannot even handle such affairs. And what is ISI doing? For me, this looks very dangerous.

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