KARACHI, Nov 24: Industrial pollution, mainly smoke, is a major problem in parts of Baldia Town, and is causing diseases among people, especially children.

Residents of one such affected area, Mohammad Khan Colony, have started vacating their houses, and shifting to safer places.

The inhabitants of Mohammad Khan Colony said a majority of the people in the locality had been suffering from respiratory ailments and skin diseases, because a number of steel industries in Baldia Town had been using rubber, old tyres in their furnaces to keep them burning. A thick cloud of smoke grips the entire residential area perennially, they said.

Abdul Hakeem, a watchman in a private telephone company, said both his children, Shazia, 3, and Saajid, 7, were suffering from chest diseases and had been coughing continuously. However, owing to poverty he was unable to get them treated.

Anwar son of Ajab Khan, Sabir, Abdul Jabbar, Naseeb Khan, and Mohammad Aslam also expressed their concern over the industrial smoke and said despite their repeated requests the owners of industries were not ready to avoid burning rubber in furnaces.

The affected people showed black scars on their arms and legs.

They said the smoke was so black that it was directly affecting their daily life, and they can’t keep their clothes clean for more than a day.

The shopkeepers said they had to pull down shutters of their shops whenever the factories’ furnaces start working.

Two bus stops are also located in the same vicinity and the drivers have also expressed their concern over growing environmental pollution.

They said the people had been living in the affected area for the last six years and the steel mills had been established here only a couple of years back.

The people said that the industries be directed to use gas instead of rubber.

They said if this it was not possible, the mills be shifted from the residential area.