KARACHI: The city’s fragile civic infrastructure is still reeling from the aftermath of downpour with rainwater and sewage still standing on many streets several days after the showers amid repair work on a 66-inch sewerage line that collapsed on Dr Ziauddin Road a couple of days ago.

While authorities say that it will take at least four more days to complete the repair work, the slow pace is causing widespread disruption to the drainage system and brought immense hardship to residents and shopkeepers in key areas of the city’s business district, including Urdu Bazaar, Burns Road, I.I. Chundrigar Road, Bolton Market, City Courts, Civil Hospital and Haqqani Chowk, etc.

According to KWSC chief engineer (sewerage) Aftab Alam Chandio, the pipeline, buried 20 feet underground, suffered significant damage, necessitating a complex repair operation which would take at least four days.

Residents of Burns Road and patients and visitors at the Sobhraj Hospital, customers at Urdu Bazaar were among the worst-affected.

They were forced to navigate through puddles and pools of filth. Some people laid down makeshift pathways using bricks to avoid wading through the sewage.

The ponds and puddles of rainwater, mixed with sewage, also led to severe traffic jam in the affected areas where hundreds of vehicles crawled bumper to bumper.

The filth at the food street on Burns Road and adjoining areas also posed a significant risk to public health.

“We are facing immense difficulties, struggling to cope with the overflowing sewage and stench, while authorities seem to be sitting idle, watching our plight as silent spectators,” a resident of Urdu Bazaar said.

One of the distraught family members of a patient at the Sobhraj Hospital said that the stench emanating from garbage and sewage was unbearable and the conditions were too hazardous for people, especially for patients.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2025