KARACHI, Aug 4: After five days of light to moderate rains which hit the city’s civic infrastructure, Karachiites finally had a sunny day on Friday.
People had a sigh of relief as it did not rain throughout the day and the afternoon sunshine pushed the mercury up to 30.5 degrees Celsius. It was mostly dry and bright to start the day across the city with the exception of some patchy clouds on the coastal line as thicker clouds finally moved away towards the Eastern Balochistan.
The Met office predicted that there were no chances of rains in the next two or three days, though the weather would be partly cloudy and a few areas might receive drizzle.
Nonetheless, the city continued to give an ugly look as the civic agencies seemingly made a little effort to drain out rainwater and sewage from the submerged localities.In a dramatic move, the residents of the Block 7 and 8 of Clifton held a demonstration over the apathy of civic agency as knee-deep stagnant water in their localities had not been drained out for the last few days. They assembled at Teen Talwar around 6:10pm and remained there for an hour, shouting slogans against the Clifton Cantonment Board and the city administrators. “This is a do and die situation,” Javed Shaikh, a protestors said.
He said that the affected residents would stage a protest demo at Karachi Press Club on Saturday. “And if the situation remains the same, we will stage a sit-in on the main Clifton Road on Sunday,” he warned.
While the puddles in almost every part of the city played havoc with people, filth and garbage remained piled up in many areas.
Shaikh Muhammad Iqbal, a resident of Defence View, said the main road was littered with garbage. “Heaps of garbage are stinking and have become a nurturing place for mosquitoes,” he said.
Meanwhile, the KPT underpass, flooded with rainwater since Monday, was opened for traffic on Friday, PPI adds.
A statement of the KPT claimed that the underpass had no design flaw and was built according to the international standards.
It claimed that flooding in the underpass occurred as rainwater, which was supposed to be drained out through the KWSB line at Teen Talwar, entered the underpass.