KARACHI, Aug 18: Stagnant rainwater has devastated more than a dozen major thoroughfares and a large number of link roads in the city.

A visit to various localities showed that most of the important roads have developed deep craters and potholes, some of them even destroyed completely.

Besides, sharp pointed gravels have surfaced at various places owing to the washing away of bitumen layers. Road users are fully exposed to the risk of injury or damage.

A major portion of University Road (between Hassan Square and Jail road intersection), a section of one track of New M A Jinnah Road (between Jail road intersection and Quaid’s mausoleum), Shahrah-i-Quaideen (between Society Office roundabout and Quaid’s Mausoleum), Tipu Sultan Road, Alamgir Road, Dadabhoy Nauroji Road, M R Kayani Road, Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road, Rafiqui Shaheed Road (between Regent Plaza and Kala Pul), New Karachi’s 5000 Road, Nai Abadi Road, I. I. Chundrigar Road, a major link road of North Nazimabad (between Nagan intersection and Power House), PECH’s Capt Sarwar Shaheed Road, are some of the examples.

As these roads often remain plunged into darkness due to the absence of streetlights, vehicles, especially motorcycles and rickshaws meet with mishaps, resulting in injuries to the travelers.

Irony of the fact is that the Rafiqui Shaheed Road, which houses four major hospitals (JPMC, NICVD, NICH and Kidney Centre), has been completely devastated by the current monsoon rains and flooding, yet the Faisal Cantonment Board has not yet bothered to undertake the patch work to fill the deep ditches and potholes all along it.

“One cannot even imagine the mental agonies the patients and their relatives suffer in reaching the hospitals which are located on this dilapidated road,” said a relative of a patient under treatment at the NICVD, remarking: “It seems that FCB officials are least interested in getting the road repaired despite the fact that it appeared to be a vital access for the ambulances that rush patients to the four hospitals and use this road round-the-clock.

The section of University Road between Civic Centre and Jail road intersection has got its bitumen worn-out from different places.

People residing in the vicinity said that the main cause of the chocking of the University Road’s storm-water drain is that drivers and crew of these buses had developed the habit of dumping all sorts of oily and greasy waste into the drains.