KARACHI, July 29: At a time when the monsoon season is only halfway through and around one-and-a-half dozen major thoroughfares of the city are being constructed at a snail’s pace, more roads have been ploughed, causing immense inconvenience to motorists and pedestrians alike.
Various tracks of different roads, which were dug up several months ago for their construction, are yet to be completed. They are, on the one hand, causing hardships to the motorists and, on the other, resulting in financial losses to the shopkeepers and other businesses set up on either side of such roads.
In most of the cases traffic was nowadays plying in the opposite direction on a single track, leaving no space for the movement of shoppers and for parking vehicles.
However the salesmen of the shops whose businesses have suffered in the wake of continuous closure of vehicular traffic on the under-construction roads, are the worst affected. In most cases they have been asked by their employers to report for duty only when the roads have been repaired.
The seriousness of the issue can be gauged from the fact that a number of salesmen, who have been deprived of their daily wages after being laid off from their temporary jobs at such shops, said that their family members have been facing starvation as they were the sole bread-earners of their families.
Access to hospitals
Moreover, the agony of patients visiting hospitals existing on the dug-up roads has multiplied owing to either the closure of such roads for vehicular traffic or because of an uneven surface and the presence of deep potholes and craters, besides dumping of construction material.
Such scenes can be witnessed on an unnamed dug-up road which leads to Aisha Manzil from Yaseenabad in Federal B Area where a number of hospitals such as Aga Khan Maternity Hospital, Fidai Hospital and Wahaj Memorial Hospital are situated.
Similarly, another major service road of Nazimabad No 3, which was dug up a couple of months back, has a number of prominent hospitals including Baqai Hospital, Specialists’ Clinic and Psychiatric Hospital.
Strangely enough, at a time when the track of an important link road which connects Gulshan-i-Iqbal with F.B. Area and North Nazimabad with three busy roundabouts in between Yaseenabad and Aisha Manzil traffic intersection, has not yet been carpeted, the authorities concerned have dug up its other track, creating a total mess.
It may be pointed out that a number of major roads and streets in the area surrounding the Aisha Manzil traffic intersection, particularly two major streets which lead to Ayub Manzil from Dastagir Post Office and Mukka Chowk from Dastagir have either been dug up for their construction or their final carpeting is still awaited.
At a time when accidents have become a matter of routine at a U-turn on Allama Ibn-i-Hassan Jarchavi Road, which bifurcates F.B. Area’s Block 6 with 10, dug-up roads in its vicinity and the bumpy condition of the main Aisha Manzil traffic intersection has become a major source of inconvenience for a large number of motorists taking the route of Shahrah-i-Pakistan via Aisha Manzil.
