KARACHI: Residents of Defence Housing Authority (DHA) Phase-1 and people who frequent the commercial area along Korangi Road, which include several commercial buildings, malls and shopping centres, have been presented with a new brick divider along the service road, which is causing a lot of inconvenience to road users.

Making the service road a double, two-track road was done very quickly when there was a digging under way in the area to lay new gas pipelines. Many folks at the time thought that work on the service road was probably linked to that. But now there is a proper brick divider right in the middle of the service road, which they are not sure, what to make of.

“It looks quite absurd actually,” said a resident of the area. “I mean service roads don’t have dividers like main roads do. They are not double roads. They are there on either side of a main road, running parallel to it, to allow traffic to gain access to the streets or buildings after getting off the main road.

“But here it feels like you are again on a main road after getting off one. Service roads as a rule are meant to be a casual road. They should not have a wrong way or right way,” he pointed out.

CBC says idea behind the initiative is to make street crimes more difficult

“What are the authorities doing? There is already a divider in the middle of the main road. Giving a divider to the service road is like making a four-road motorway,” said a fitness enthusiast, who is a member of a gym built on the rooftop of one of the buildings located on the service road.

“Out of habit I didn’t realise that there was a new divider on the service road so backing up my car I bumped into the divider,” said a regular shopper of the two popular malls also situated on the service road. “I wonder whose brilliant idea this was,” she added.

“The service road has become so congested. It is not easy to make a U-turn on such narrow tracks,” a motorist complained.

When Dawn reached out to the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC) to understand what motivated them to divide the service road into two proper tracks, it was explained that this was done on the recommendation of the DHA Security and Vigilance.

A CBC spokesperson told Dawn that the reason behind the step was street crime. “We had been getting complaints from the DHA Security and Vigilance about rampant street crime in the area, especially in the area from the Nadra Mega Centre to the shopping malls,” the spokesperson said.

“The purse and mobile phone snatchers on motorbikes would easily disappear in the back roads after stealing, making it very difficult for anyone chasing after them to find them. With a divider on the road now it becomes challenging for the thieves, too, to run or manoeuvre their run away vehicles. It may also slow them down,” the spokesperson explained.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2023