Experts on Saturday linked a continued data compilation to civic, economic and environmental development, saying that citizens widely lack awareness to solve their daily issues mainly related to municipal departments. At a concluding ceremony of the "Project Empowered Citizens for Improved Urban Governance" funded by the USAID, held here at a hotel, urban planner Farhan Anwar who is also the project manager, told the audience that "the project helped find ways for public issues," besides improving their daily civic life.
Farhan said public face immediate problems including garbage, broken roads and streets, spelling over of sewerage that all are related to the civic departments and need early resolution. Giving an example of developed world, he said citizens are encouraged to work with service providing departments to find solution for their problems.
In Pakistan, he said where civic departments confront NGOs and citizens when it comes to problems identification and their resolution. Pointing out some critical deficits, he said public widely lack awareness about governance system and how to report issues for solution.
As one of the deficits hampers research on civic issues to resolutions and development, he said "there is no consolidated database" for Karachi and the only available thing "was segregated and ill structured data", which never helps to find out problems and their solutions. No trend of data compilation exists in the country, Farhan said.
He underlined the need of public inclusion in governance system and decision making to improve quality of life with reduced problems. The Urban Planner also regretted that country's development schemes have never been executed on a transparent basis and social accountability.
He also highlighted prospects of million goal development and its importance. Earlier, Shehri-CBE general secretary Amber Ali Bhai in his welcome address highlighted the organisations working and objectives besides introducing the very project.