KARACHI: The city continued to receive rain for the second consecutive day on Monday causing hardship to people, mostly office-goers, college and university students, due to inundated roads, unfenced and choked drains.

Though the drizzle continued throughout the day, the city witnessed moderate to heavy rain after 2pm for a brief period that continued with frequent breaks for almost an hour in different parts of the city.

The Met office revised its advisory and predicted that the current system was likely to over on Tuesday (today), but another westerly wave is expected from Wednesday (tomorrow).

“The monsoon currents are continuously penetrating in the country from Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. A fresh westerly wave is also likely to enter upper parts of the country from July 26,” said the Met office statement. Under the influence of the emerging wave, it said, rain and wind-thundershower with few heavy falls is expected in Karachi, Tharparkar, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Larkana, Jacobabad, Dadu, Shaheed Benazirabad, Hyderabad, Sanghar, Badin and Thatta.

Surjani Town received the highest count of rain of 65.4 millimeter followed by Gulshan-i-Maymar 34.5mm, North Karachi 23.8mm and Saadi Town recorded 22.8mm.

All other areas of the city, according to the Met office, received only traces or single digit count of the downpour.

The city infrastructure, which sustained the impact of Sunday’s rain, however, failed to perform on the second day in district Central where the area around Nagan Chowrangi inundated again due to rainwater mixed with sewage overflowing from choked drains.

Shadman Town reemerged as challenge for the authorities where wastewater overflowed to an extent that it disconnected the road link of Sakhi Hasan graveyard with the main artery.

The people, mainly area residents, took to social media to share their ordeal after the brief spell of rains, posting photos and videos of the road showing vehicles stuck up in rainwater.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2023