IN a bid to provide better civic and urban amenities to the Karachites, President Asif Zardari approved a number of mega-projects for the city at a meeting on Monday. There is reason to believe that the projects, that range from sanitation to irrigation, have been planned keeping in view the problems faced by the people. Five of them relate to the transportation and communication system, which certainly reflects the reality that transportation constitutes one of the biggest problems there. Thousands who have to stand in queues, sometimes waiting for hours, to catch a bus will find commuting in the city much easier through the addition of 500 buses. Likewise, other projects - Karachi Circular Railway, Lyari Expressway and Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway, Larkana-Khairpur Bridge - will benefit a large section of the population. It is comforting to learn that these projects, some of which were launched earlier, are scheduled to be complete soon. Our mega-cities are up against a number of odds, most of which result from lack of urban planning. It is however the situation in Karachi that worries one the most. Unfortunately, the development up until now has not been in consonance with the rate of increase in population. The efforts by the City Nazim Mustafa Kamal, who was hailed by a foreign rating agency to be one of the best mayors in the world, deserves appreciation, but there is still a lot that remains to be done. Karachi is home to more than 60 percent of the population of urban Sindh, which continues to grow at a fast rate. Estimates are that by 2015 it will have more than 15 million dwellers. As of now, a fairly large chunk of the population is residing in urban localities devoid of basic civic facilities like clean drinking water, education and electricity. The President has taken a step in the right direction. The federal and provincial governments, working in concert with each other, have done well by trying to address the city's problems. Hopefully, better results would be yielded this way.