KARACHI: Brief spell of rain was too much for a Cantt area
KARACHI, Jan 3: The scattered showers last month did not have much impact on most parts of the city. That the weather has since been cold is a different matter. A few localities, however, still reel from the brief spell.
Bhitai Colony at the Korangi Crossing is one such locality. Big pools and puddles, added and abetted by overflowing sewers, could be seen everywhere where there were open spaces before the showers.
Mosquitoes and flies are a natural product of such stretches of stagnant water. They alternately invade the residents day and night, spreading various epidemics in the residents.
The Korangi Creek Cantonment Board, which administers the locality, seems to be acting as a silent spectator. There is no effort apparently on the part of the KCCB to plug the leaks in sewerage lines.
Every winter when the water supply improves because of the weather, sewers fail to carry the load. Many lines leak and burst, flooding the open spaces. Even a brief spell of rain, like the last one, is enough to make the residents to suffer for weeks and sometimes months.
Overflowing gutters destroy the patches of roads left intact by the previous such flooding. Now hardly any road is left metalled. Once there had been long stretches of well-paved and metalled roads. An NGO that has prepared signboards to name the roads in the locality is being dissuaded by some people from doing so. They say when there are no roads why should they have any names. Particularly the names of the nation’s heroes should not be dishonoured by associating them with the bumpy dirt tracks, they argue.
The only excuse the KCCB authorities offer is that they do not have adequate funds to handle the problems the colony suffers from. Before the Nawaz government had abolished the octroi tax, the KCCB used to get more than Rs10 million in the levy. The other resources the board has are hardly enough to pay the salaries of the staff and to meet the day-to-day expenses, the authorities assert.—NA
KARACHI, Jan 3: The scattered showers last month did not have much impact on most parts of the city. That the weather has since been cold is a different matter. A few localities, however, still reel from the brief spell.
