KARACHI, Sept 4: City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal has directed the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board to convert the recently laid three-mile-long temporary storm-water drain in Clifton into a permanent one so that it could serve as an alternative drainage system for Clifton’s blocks 8 and 9 for the next 40 years.
In addition to this, a new storm-water drain was being designed for Bath Island and Gulshan-i-Faisal, he said.
This was stated by the KWSB managing director, Brig Iftikhar Haider while briefing newsmen at Glass Tower Nullah and Schon Circle on Monday.
Speaking about the measures being taken by the KWSB to help resolve drainage system of both Clifton and Bath Island, he said the KWSB on the directives of the city Nazim had to make a temporary storm-water drain from Glass Tower to Nehre Khayam for flushing out rainwater from Clifton’s Khayaban-i-Jami and Khayaban-i-Roomi which had remained stagnant there for days together as the construction of Clifton bypass had resulted in raising the level of both the roads and choking of Glass Tower nullah because of land mafia’s act of reducing its width from 50 feet to 20 feet at a number of places.
He said work to give a permanent shape to the recently laid over three-mile long storm-water drain (from Glass Tower to Nehre Khayam) which will help solve water drainage system of Clifton’s blocks 8 and 9 for the 40 years would be completed either by December or January.
Later, Brig Haider took the newsmen to a portion of Glass Tower Nullah which the owners of at least 14 adjacent bungalows had occupied by constructing parking lots, gardens, tennis court and even swimming pool.
The city government had removed all sorts of encroachments from the nullah and the KWSB men were seen taking out a huge quantity of silt and other filthy material from the Nullah which had played havoc in the recent rains.
Brig Haider told newsmen that since both the Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ibad and the City Nazim Syed Mustafa have resolved not to allow covering of nullahs and any sort of encroachments on them, the task of cleaning nullahs and storm-water drains will not only be facilitated but would be undertaken round-the-year.
