Thread by @OonibAzam_

Participants of a public hearing held on Tuesday to discuss the revamping and restoration of the Gujjar, Orangi and Mehmoodabad storm water drains walked out of it because representatives of the project’s main proponent, NDMA, were absent. thenews.com.pk/print/913116-n…

Sepa was said to have carried out a farcical public hearing on the project because not only NDMA representatives but officials of the KMC under whose administrative control these drains fall, the KWSB whose sewage flows in these drains, and the SSWMB were also uncannily absent.

Sepa Deputy Director Imran Sadiq, who was conducting the public hearing, kept whispering about the whereabouts of NDMA officials with Sepa staff during the hearing, and was visibly irked by their absence.

Towards the end, the hearing had lesser participants than Sepa officials themselves. The public hearing of all the three nalas, which are poles apart in terms of their locations, was held adjacent to the Mehmoodabad Nullah near the KPT Interchange.

Sepa had arranged a small tent for the hearing. Since there was no projector, the report was presented on a small laptop, and that too without the availability of a microphone.

The NDMA had hired Lahore-based Pak Green Enviro-Engineering for the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the project. The NDMA’s Lt Col Kamran Adalat submitted the
report to Sepa.

Advocate Zubair Abro pointed out that the NDMA should clarify if there was any tender process under the procurement rules or if it just hand-picked some Lahore-based environment consultants for preparing the report, because it had major flaws.

Sepa Director General Naeem Mughal was also absent from the public hearing. Mughal had also not shown up at the public hearing on the Karachi Circular Railway on November 10.

Pointing out the inadequate representative stakeholder consultation, @aadilayub said that 65 to 70 respondents were selected by the Lahore-based consultant, and out of those one to five per cent were women.

@aadilayub said that there are three nullahs that are at different locations, having different impacts and different constituents, “but they’re all being rolled up into one and being represented by a single EIA”.

Nowhere is a breakdown given of how many people are from Orangi, how many from Gujjar and how many from Mehmoodabad,” he said, pointing out that the report isn’t even sure of their exact numbers.

The only documentary evidence of the site visits and stakeholder consultations are six pictures of the affected people in the report.

“When I shared this with the affected people, our contact person Arsalan Anjum of the Orangi Nullah pointed out the people he knows personally and who are vehemently against the project, and even shared a video of one of them saying so on the spot.”

In the report it’s mentioned that only eight per cent disapproved of the project because they would lose their houses as a result of the project. “Are we to believe that only eight per cent of the demolition-affected people were engaged during stakeholder consultations?”

Responding to this, the Pak Green EnviroEngineering’s Ahmad Raza asked Ayub to read the history of Manchester and the history of other nations, and then present arguments of Pakistan. “We’ll have to see what we’re leaving behind for the next generation.”(I will upload a video)