KARACHI: There is a barrier in your way, reminding you that you do not belong there or that the one behind the blockade doesn’t want you to come any closer. It’s all for security, for we are all so afraid.

High walls, tall gates, the ‘Beware of dog’ sign, grilles, barriers, cement blocks that get higher and higher, barbed wires, razor wires, etc, are ugly, no doubt, but who’s thinking of beauty when feeling threatened?

Pardeep Kumar runs a chemist shop right across the Civil Hospital Karachi. He and his staff crawl into the shop through a tiny door on one side under the heavy white grille which covers the entrance.

They deal with customers like a bank cashier does from a little hole from behind the glass. In their case they hand the medicines and take the money through the holes in the grille.

“After being looted at gunpoint eight times, we had no choice but to lock ourselves in this cage,” says Mr Kumar while gesturing around him.

When reminded that guns can also point towards him through the holes in the grille, he nods. “Yes, but it still makes a big difference when they can’t come inside.

Because when they would come earlier, there used to be at least three of them with one inside holding the gun, another giving him cover while keeping a watch and the third ready with a getaway vehicle.

This way even if any of them comes inside, he won’t have an easy getaway so they’d just prefer to skip our shop and go do whatever that they do somewhere else,” says the shopkeeper.

A street with a barrier.

“See, even the people or distributors, who come to deliver us the goods in covered pickups have a guard to protect them. And they even have the option to drive off if finding themselves in some difficult situation. Sitting here, we are just sitting ducks.”

Asked why they don’t get an armed security guard, too, Mr Kumar points out that it would hardly make any difference. “First of all, it may create a problem for us as seeing a guard may create the impression that we do very good business and have plenty of cash in our shop.

Then the guards aren’t very well-trained anyway. In fact, holding dangerous weapons, they are a threat to themselves and to us too. Some don’t even have proper licences for that weapons as many security companies have just one licence for up to 20 weapons.

In that case, if something were to happen, we can’t even file an FIR without our hired guard having a licence,” he says.

“After each robbery at my shop, we got a police van for protection, too. But that didn’t last. So it is better to protect ourselves. Today, we see even poor people who come looking for medical help at the hospital,” he gestures up ahead at the civil hospital, “get robbed of their wallets, mobile phones. Surveillance cameras at various corners in the area through which the police can monitor the goings-on here could be very useful, but we don’t have those either,” he sighs.

A shop or a zoo cage?

Mr Kumar’s views are shared by many other businesses and shop-owners. In residential areas, too, people have had to take their own security in their hands. Some 30 years back, the neighbourhood people used to pay a guard they had hired some money to patrol the area. Today, they have collected money to build barriers for barricading streets with guards, who recognise the residents, posted there to lift the barrier just for them.

In the name of security, some streets have even been blocked permanently with heavy cement blocks that vary in heights or three to 12 feet even. The embassies or consulates even use such blocks to encroach upon roads and even create their own safe passages.

One of several blocked streets in Defence Phase-I.

Homes, especially those that have had unwanted visitors before, are making their walls higher. If that isn’t enough, they are also cementing shards of glass on the walls. Some have even lined them with expensive barbed or razor wire that may also hold electric charge.

And all this has happened only because of corruption and lack of responsibility among the city’s law enforcement agencies.

The police’s priority is protecting VIPs not the common people so this is how the common folk protect themselves. It has happened and is happening and it won’t be long before more will lose all faith in such government bodies and take the law into their own hands.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2015

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