KARACHI, Aug 4: Over 160 residential quarters of lower staff of the Civil Hospital are in a shabby condition, posing serious threat to the lives and property of the hospital employees and their families.

The quarters are allotted to various categories of employees, including sweepers, ward boys, technicians, ayas (maid), nurses, watchmen and cooks, ranging from BPS 1 to BPS 15.

The residents said that there were nearly 450 hospital employees — as more than one person, per family, was working in the hospital — with their about 2,000 family members living in miserable conditions in the quarters located in the premises of the hospital.

The residents blame the Public Works Department (PWD) for not carrying out the repairs in these buildings and demand that a thorough probe be initiated into the matter to find out where, if at all, the budget for the repairs of these buildings is being spent.

Majority of the residents comprise children of the former employees of the hospital, who have been living in these quarters since a long time and many of them have replaced their parents as hospital employees.

The buildings present a pathetic look, as electricity wires lay scattered along the walls and floor, while ceilings and walls in many of the quarters have been severely damaged by seepage and the sewerage system has deteriorated and the ground floor quarters particularly remained damp giving a foul smell. The children of the employees have to play in an area between the buildings which is littered with garbage. Pieces of concrete have fallen from the ceilings in many a flats exposing iron bars.

The flats comprise one room, a kitchen and a balcony, while some of the residents living on the ground floor have constructed an additional room by encroaching upon small pieces of land. At an average, 12 to 15 people live in one flat.

As per plan, there are six common bathrooms — including lavatory — for 12 flats, but owing to the lack of maintenance, these have become nonoperational and the residents have constructed their own toilets in their small flats, which has further shrunk the living space in the quarters.

These flats are situated at two places — one is “Servant Quarters Buildings” and the others are “Servants Quarters in Dhobi Compound.”

The residents of Dhobi Compound, comprising about 30 flats, are comparatively fortunate as their electricity bills are paid by the hospital, while the power bills for the flats in the Servant Quarters buildings, which were also paid by the hospital about a couple of decades back, are since then paid by the residents, the residents of the Servant Quarters complain.

The supervisor of the Servant Quarter buildings, Noor Habib, who lives in flat No 33, and was born in the quarters to a former hospital employee, said that he did not remember any major repair work done in the buildings that were constructed over half a century back. “A contractor did come a few months back and had replaced the iron sewerage pipe with a cemented one, but did not do any other repair work,” he said.

A resident of flat 61, Faqir Mohammad, a ward boy, complained that a fire had erupted in his flat due to faulty electric wiring, but despite reporting the incident to the authorities concerned, no repairs were done and he himself had to arrange for the essential repairs.

Another resident, Kishor Mohan, of flat No 89, who is a sweeper living on ground floor, said due to overflowing of sewers, the floor of his flat and those of others living on the ground floor, remained damp due to sewage, and the house had a foul smell all the time, and some times when the sewerage system was choked the sewage seeped in and there was almost six-inch water standing in the rooms.

General secretary of the Sindh Paramedical Staff Welfare Association, Hazrat Kalam, who was born here and lives in flat No 82, alleged that the PWD spent all the budget allocated for repairs of these buildings on the residences of doctors, house officers, and other high officials.

He said that the electricity wiring was faulty and live wires were lying naked along the walls posing serious threat to the residents, particularly the children, who played there.

He said though a few fire incidents had occurred in the past, due to faulty wiring, but the KESC vehicles could not reach these buildings as more than two-thirds of the street—that connected the Chand Bibi Road to the Yaqoob Khan Road, near the Eidgah Police Station, and passes along these buildings — was encroached upon at the time of construction of a new urology hospital building.

Ironically, the encroached portion of the street was not even used by the hospital and it had been kept as an open space where outer units of the spilt-unit airconditioners, wires, etc were kept, he said.

A resident of flat No 14 in the Servant Quarters in the Dhobi Compound, Basharat Ali, who works in the stores, said that the sewerage system was damaged, which had affected the walls and ceilings of the buildings, and the electric wiring was faulty and posed threat to the people in general and children in particular.

Naib Qasid Sharifzad Gul, who lives in flat 119, Waljee Tapu, who is a sweeper and lives in flat 86, a Qasid Mohammad Nasir, living in flat 67, a peon Sharafuddin, resident of flat 61 and many other residents also said attributed the situation to the criminal negligence of the officials concerned.