Saddar parking plaza lying idle since 2009

The much-publicised multi-storied Saddar parking plaza-cum-shopping mall project of former City District Government Karachi (CDGK) has failed to prove its utility despite a lapse of six years since its construction. The landmark project, which is now a property of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), was inaugurated by Sindh Governor Dr Ishrat-ul-Ebad Khan and the then City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal in July 2009.
The parking plaza building built at a cost of Rs 650 million on Preedy Street, near Empress Market, has 11 floors, seven of them were reserved for parking, two floors for housing a shopping mall with two basements. The parking plaza, which has a capacity to accommodate 700 cars and 500 motorcycles, is fully computerised with surveillance, video cameras, besides having huge elevators and a standby generator.
Though the purpose of constructing such a huge parking plaza was to ensure smooth flow of vehicular traffic by bringing an end to haphazard parking of vehicles on various busy roads and streets of Saddar and Empress Market, the project could not be become successful owing to a number of reasons. For stance, traffic police was supposed to ban parking of vehicles on roads and streets all around Saddar and Empress Market, whereas the KMC land department was required to remove all sorts of encroachments from Saddar as well as from the vicinity of the parking plaza, but both the organisations utterly failed in discharging their duties.
Sources said that had the KMC succeeded in removing encroachments from different parts of Saddar and Empress Market and the traffic police banned haphazard parking of vehicles on different roads and streets of from there, not only the KMC would have earned sufficient revenue from its parking plaza through motorists and motorcyclists, but the flow of traffic all around Saddar and Empress Market would have become much better. Meanwhile, filthy water which often remains gushing out from a chocked sewerage line, near the parking plaza, had already caused extensive damage to a portion of main Preedy Street, besides creating stinking atmosphere in the vicinity.