KARACHI, Aug 26: The lives of hundreds of people in a Lyari locality are in constant danger because of unhygienic conditions and the failure of the authorities to perform their duties.
A visit to Haji Pir Mohammad Road in the Shah Beg Lane area shows that people living along the drain are forced to live in subhuman conditions because of sheer negligence of the authorities.
A storm water drain passes along the roadside, which has been converted into a sewerage line and a place for dumping household garbage.
As a result, a major portion of the drain has clogged. The overflowing sewage often enters into the nearby houses, where stinking water wreaks havoc.
“The situation gets worse when it rains,” a resident remarked, “when we face stinking water entering into our houses, and we become helpless to drain out the sewerage water coming from the chocked drain.”
Filth and dirt has become a common feature in the locality. Children are seen playing on wooden structures used as a passage to cross the drain in front of their houses, completely unaware of any hazard.
Heaps of garbage are littered everywhere, as if the whole area has been converted into a dumping site.
A few elderly woman said that, “for years we are living with filth and dirt, and nobody takes any notice of our conditions.” “Perhaps because of our living conditions, big people (referring to officials) do not visit our locality,” she remarked.
Local NGO activists blamed the elected local bodies representatives for their miseries and for their failure to address their problems.
They said so far, billions of rupees have been spent to solve the water and sewerage problems in Lyari, but there is no sigh of any hope for the redressal of their grievances.
“We (are) fed up (with) agitating over the same problems again and again, as we are convinced that neither our representatives, nor officials are sincere to solve these problems,” a frustrated youth said.
They said that, “we heaved a sigh of hope when (the) army took over, thinking that something would be done to redress our grievances. But nothing has changed.”
The representatives of local NGOs say that the storm drains should be covered and steps should be taken to convert them into sewerage lines.
Named after a prominent local socialite — Haji Pir Mohammad — the road directly links Haat Chowk with Shah Latif Bhittai Road that separates Shah Beg Lane from the Baghdadi area in Lyari Town.
With the passage of time, the width of the road has been reduced with the growth of population and encroachments on both sides of the road.
The area had once been a strong support base of the Pakistan People’s Party, but in the local bodies elections, the party has lost the seat of Nazim in the Shah Beg Union Council area.
A large number of the people are labourers and constructed their wooden structure houses into pucca houses when there was a construction boom in the Middle East, and petro-dollars started to pour in.
KARACHI, Aug 26: The lives of hundreds of people in a Lyari locality are in constant danger because of unhygienic conditions and the failure of the authorities to perform their duties.
