KARACHI: Defence Housing Authority resident community groups were abuzz with rain alert news since early on Thursday.

Many residents were saying that their circumstances, due to dug up roads here and there, were such that they were afraid of normal rains and here the forecast was for heavy rain with thunder, which was extremely worrisome for them.

The president of the Clifton Defence Community (CDC) told Dawn that they felt vulnerable during the rains in DHA. “Even normal rain is scary for us. It too can give us misery,” he said.

“There are ditches dug up everywhere, some in the name of building storm-water drains, some for laying new Sui Southern Gas Company lines or some other utility laying cables or the other. The last time it rained, which was just a few weeks ago, a car had also fallen into one such ditch as you can’t see the dug up areas when it rains because there is water everywhere,” he pointed out.

It was a chaos when it rained last time, president of Clifton Defence Community says

“You can’t see whether the water is inches deep or several feet deep. There is a need for proper fencing and barriers in such instances, which was not done last time,” he added.

“We reached out to DHA and Cantonment Board Clifton [CBC] for this. The DHA did not respond but CBC has said that they are ready in case of all rain-related emergencies. They have put little fencing in some places and plastic tape in others. But we believe that such measures are not enough in normal situations and here we are hearing of more than usual rain,” said Husayn Abbas, a resident of Phase 7 extension.

“Where other institutions are taking care and precautions and sharing emergency centre phone numbers to call in case of emergencies, the CBC look unprepared in comparison. They are not even issuing awareness messages on their social media pages where there is only publicity about their cosmetic works in DHA. Still, there is a DHA business number, 1092, which all us residents know of. Whether it will be of use or not remains to be seen,” said director of municipal affairs, CDC, Mohammad Ali.

“The real concern of the residents is not being addressed by the DHA. We want to see rescue camps set up at places, machines deployed to pump out water and pull out stuck cars, etc. Right now, we can only pray that rain doesn’t happen. Because if it does, we are sure to expect disaster,” concluded Arshad Hussain, a resident of Phase 5.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2024