KARACHI, Aug 5: The defective storm water drainage system of the city has totally collapsed and civil engineers admit that it needs to be streamlined on an emergency basis.

A survey shows that the recent monsoon rains have exposed the system’s shortcomings when it causes severe flooding, damages property and disrupts services, adding to the miseries of the people.

Reasons for the failure of the system include lack of maintenance, non-existence of storm water drains in private societies and katchi abadis, multi-storey buildings, encroachments, and misuse of open drains.

There are quite a few government and semi-government development agencies which control a large part of the city. These include the city government, cantonment boards, DHA, Pakistan Railways, Pak PWD, MES Naval area, etc.

All these agencies are quite independent in their working and jurisdictions. Some function under the provincial government, whereas others take directives from the federal government.

The survey shows there is no system, as such, of coordinating their functioning. As a result, storm water drains passing through various localities which fall in these authorities jurisdictions are not properly maintained and their mismanagement has been bitterly exposed during the recent monsoon rains.

The issue of these storm water drains has never been taken seriously by these agencies seriously.

In the past, these storm water drains were maintained by the defunct KMC and the DMCs, while no other development agency played any role in the cleaning of these drains.

A municipal official admitted that partial cleaning of a few sections of a handful of drains did not serve any purpose and at present there was a complete lack of coordination among development agencies. He said joint efforts were needed to clean these drains right from their starting point up to the point where they fell into the river.

The survey also shows that the covered drains are not regularly cleaned owing to the concrete slab covering them. It is observed that these covered drains have been occupied by various people who have set up shops and other structures on these drains which have made the cleaning work impossible.

It is also noted that the open drains are being used for dumping garbage and other solid waste. These drains were not completely cleared before rains by the agencies concerned.

The main reasons behind the devastation caused by the recent rains in Karachi were ill-planned construction of highrises and obstructions created in the natural route of storm water flow to the Arabian sea.

The survey noted that illegal settlements had sprung up along main nullah and rivers which reduced their width. Since no efforts had been launched to clean these nullah, accumulating silt has reduced their depth.

The authorities of various development agencies under whose jurisdictions these nullah and rivers fall have failed to check encroachments along these nullah and rivers.

This situation caused the storm water stagnant for several days, creating hardships far residents and damaging the roads and service lanes.

According to a civil engineer, storm water drains should be handed over to a single agency.

He also proposed that an effective task force should be constituted to ensure that the storm water network was properly maintained everywhere, and to keep vigilance over the desilting process and encroachment activities over the entire storm water network.