KARACHI, Aug 26: City will witness the same kind of devastation in case of heavy downpour, as it faced during the early rains of monsoon, because the cleanliness drive could not achieve the desired results.

These views were expressed by some officials of the city government on Tuesday.

Recent downpour badly devastated the infrastructure of the city mainly because of non-cleaning of stormwater drains that were used to be cleaned before the inception of the city government.

Officials concerned said that encroachment was the main cause of the whole mess and remarked that still no plan had been formulated to remove encroachment from these drains.

The recently launched city government’s cleanliness campaign, aimed at removing garbage and cleaning sewerage and storm water drains, failed to accomplish the desired results due to shortage of financial and human resources.

Stormwater drainage system requires complete overhauling on a very large scale, official said. The package, announced by President Musharraf for improvement of the infrastructure, also includes upgradation of drainage system, he added.

When asked about the steps taken in the recent cleanliness campaign launched by the city government, he said that the work was just limited to clear the choked pipelines. He said that complete cleaning of the drains was not possible due to shortage of funds and manpower.—PPI