Street crimes’ solution
DESPITE the authorities’ promises to get tough on perpetrators, there appears to be no let-up in the street crime epidemic that afflicts Karachi. Over the last few weeks there have been heart-breaking stories of promising young students gunned down for resisting armed muggers, people shot while out shopping, and shopkeepers attacked by armed thugs. In fact, the conventional wisdom in this forsaken city is to immediately hand over your valuables to criminals and offer no resistance. According to CPLC figures, there were around 85,000 cases of street crime reported last year in the city. Add up the number of unreported cases and the figures are frightful, indicating that every single day of the year hundreds of people in Karachi are deprived of either their cash, mobiles, vehicles or their lives. The solutions offered by the powers that be are mostly tried, tested and failed. For example, during last week’s apex committee meeting there were promises to crack down on street crime, while later the chief minister called upon specialised police units to join the fight against violent crime, while the Sindh police chief asked people to install CCTV cameras outside their homes.
Clichéd as it may sound, out-of-the-box solutions are needed for a police force of a few thousand to protect a sprawling city of millions, as the typical methods have failed to deliver. During the apex committee meeting it was mentioned that over 1,600 criminals who had committed street robberies multiple times were bailed out between a week to six months of their arrest. Officials said a law is being considered to prevent repeat offenders from returning to the streets. Such efforts need to be sped up, while easy access to illegal weapons must be curtailed; these are amongst the many ways to crack down on crime. Moreover, those black sheep within the police department that patronise crime must be weeded out, and the police force reimagined along modern lines in order to bring a semblance of normality to Karachi’s streets.
Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2023
Digital census
THE country is set to take a giant leap forward in the enumeration of its human resources after the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics received the last of the 126,000 tablet computers sanctioned for a ‘digital census’ of the population. In the words of Nadra Chairman Tariq Malik, the exercise will evolve “From scribbled responses on millions of paper sheets to real-time validated data in apps on secure devices with satellite imagery”. It is hoped that this transformation will make the massive exercise of counting more than 200m citizens not just quicker and more efficient but also much more precise. The possibilities seem endless. With detailed data made digitally available with the PBS, Pakistani authorities and policymakers will have, as Mr Malik has described it, “a foundational system for evidence-based policymaking.” For example, thanks to the global positioning system and geographical information system data hoped to be collected through the digital census, it will become much easier for authorities to see where Pakistanis live and how best to reach them. Such information will be incredibly handy when dealing with national-level emergencies, such as epidemics or natural disasters. GPS data could be used to implement very targeted lockdowns, for example, while GIS data will come in handy when understanding the impact of a calamity, like the floods seen this year, and devising the most efficient solutions for emergency response. Even the traditional use of census data — for example, in conducting delimitation exercises and allocating seats in parliament — will be massively transformed as important decisions such as how to mark constituencies could be taken at a granular level rather than on guesstimates and assumptions alone.
It may be a good idea to involve representatives of political parties in the exercise to keep it transparent so that they do not have any objections to the census results once they are put out. It would, undoubtedly, be desirable if future elections could be conducted based on scientifically collected, accurate data. All political parties are in agreement over this. However, it should be made clear that the timeline of the first digital census will not affect the general elections due this year to avoid any political controversy over an otherwise commendable initiative. Finally, information is power, and it will be a major responsibility for PBS and Nadra to ensure that the census data collected stays secure and is used judiciously.
Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2023
Spiralling flour crisis
THE current flour crisis has been looming on the horizon for several months. Concerns were being expressed ever since the last domestic wheat harvest fell far short of expectations as well as the country’s consumption requirements.
The catastrophic summer floods exacerbated the situation as the wheat stocks in the flood-hit areas were badly damaged. Balochistan on Saturday said the province was left with just enough wheat inventory to last it another few days as its food minister issued an emergency call for immediate help.
The situation in the other provinces isn’t very different as far as the common people are concerned. In Sindh’s Mirpurkhas district, the death of a man in a stampede that broke out among a large crowd of poor people that had gathered to buy subsidised flour is indicative of the shape of things to come.
Punjab and Sindh are not allowing their wheat and flour to cross their borders as alleged by Balochistan. Flour millers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also complained of less wheat supplies from Punjab which grows over 70pc of the nation’s wheat. The federal government is also blaming the provinces, especially Punjab, for the crisis.
The Minister for National Food Security and Research, Mr Tariq Bashir Cheema, had last week claimed there was no shortage of wheat as all the provinces had sufficient stocks but were not releasing the grain (to the flour mills). Punjab has since increased the wheat quota of flour mills from its stocks to ease shortages in the province.
The increased supply of subsidised wheat to the mills should help ease flour shortages in Punjab. But the issue is that the other provinces aren’t left with sufficient stocks to last them through to the next harvest. Consequently, low-middle-income consumers are faced with a double whammy as the shortages are leading to a daily spike in flour prices in most parts of the country.
The market rate of flour is nearly more than double the official, subsidised price as the flour mills are buying wheat from the open market at much higher than the government price. Many mills aren’t operating at their full grinding capacity which is also adding to the shortages and in turn inflating the flour prices. With food inflation averaging around 31pc since June, it is hard not to expect people to desperately look for subsidised flour to feed their families.
Watching the federal government and the provinces trade accusations at this time when most middle-class households are struggling to survive is abhorrent. The inability of the federal and provincial authorities to provide relief to the inflation-stricken people speaks volumes about their competence. While the federal government should be faulted for its failure to foresee the crisis, the provinces must be held responsible for their failure to take timely administrative actions to control profit-rigging within their jurisdictions.
Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2023