Karachi’s enduring encroachments

Encroachments in Karachi are so extreme in many areas that roads have become unusable for motorcycles, let alone cars.

What should be a safe drive through a market area becomes a dangerous obstacle course peppered with stalls, pushcarts and illegal structures that choke the city's arteries.And this latest ultimatum can safely be taken with a grain of salt, given that Mayor Murtaza Wahab's 15-day ultimatum, issued on October 24 with warnings of strict consequences, came and went with a whimper.

By the time three days remained, less than 10% of the targeted encroachments had reportedly been removed.

The provincial government's cosmetic response was to suspend five KMC officials for "negligence and poor performance".The deeper problem is not the absence of orders but the persistence of the encroachments themselves.

The practice remains hugely profitable.

Instead of paying rent or other location costs, encroachers only have to pay bribes – which can be relatively nominal – or the occasional fine, which are easily absorbed as the cost of doing business.

Even when encroachers' inventory is confiscated, the products are usually food and other low-cost, fast-moving goods, and most vendors can easily budget for a day's inventory and write it off.The new joint operation involving police, city administration and the transport department may produce photos of cleared roads for a few days.

But without addressing the incentives that allow encroachments to return, it will suffer the same fate as previous campaigns.