KARACHI, July 20: An uneasy calm prevails in the areas formerly constituting district south and west amid resentment among people over the failure of the local bodies representatives to ensure provision of basic civic facilities as promised at the time of the introduction of the devolution plan. The silence may not last long as civic problems are constantly getting serious, although expression of resentment by the affected people seems to have lost its intensity only due to the commencement of LB election process.

It has now become quite clear that the devolution system has failed to produce the desired results, so far as these areas are concerned, even after the elected representatives completed a full term.

The main objective of the system is to provide at least basic facilities to people at grass-root level. However, no remarkable change in most of the towns carved out of the formerly south and west districts has been noticed. The Site, Keamari, Lyari and Baldia towns gained nothing in terms of improvement in water supply, sewerage system, hygienic conditions, etc. Rather, the aggravating situation had forced people to resort to agitation many a times over the past three years.

Community leaders attribute the resentment to the poor water supply and sewerage systems in the towns, pointing out that the same have almost collapsed. Numerous other civic problems are linked with these systems, they maintain.

Unhygienic conditions in south and west of Karachi could be gauged from the fact in many localities, particularly those densely populated, heaps of garbage remain unattended for weeks and people are exposed to health hazard.

People have been complaining that sanitary workers do not attend to their duties regularly and due to their absence, the dumped garbage litters the whole locality around, making life miserable.

Nearly 350 tons of garbage is generated daily in every town and it appears that the town administrations have either insufficient resources to dispose it of regularly or they lack in management capacity.

A social worker, criticizing the civic and development agencies for mismanagement and ill-planning, said: “The situation is the result of our own fault as we do not elect right people who are capable of solving our civic problems. Instead of testing the new ones on merit, we go for the same people who have always failed to come up to our expectations,” he added.

According to an NGO activist, the monsoon rains last year and the ensuing flooding had exposed the system’s shortcomings as all utility services had sustained extensive damage.

He pointed out that there was no mechanism in place for proper coordination among the utility agencies to ensure their uninterrupted service and protect their system and network from getting damaged.

The storm-water drains passing through various localities could not be maintained properly or cleared of filth and garbage timely. The clogged drains result in flood and many low-lying areas in Lyari, Keamari and Site towns are submerged.

The activist says the issue of drain cleaning had, in fact, never been taken seriously, adding that partial cleaning of a few drains does not serve any purpose.

It has been observed that the concerned agencies could not clean up the drains covered with concrete slabs because of the illegally raised shops and other structures onto them.

A civil engineer was of the view that the situation could not be improved unless an agency was established exclusively for keeping all the storm-water drains clean.

The densely populated Saddar, Keamari and Lyari towns had in the past a lot of designated sites for dumping garbage and the sites had regularly been attended by garbage lifters. However, almost all these sites have now been occupied by land-grabbers who have annexed them to extend their buildings.

Finding no place to dump domestic garbage, people have to throw it at street corners supposing that some municipal workers would lift it. As municipal workers do not discharge their responsibilities efficiently, the dump swells further, at many places to block thoroughfares, even main roads, completely. The situation aggravates to the extent that one could hardly endure the foul smell coming out of these dumps.