KARACHI, Aug 13: The Defence Housing Authority may be considered the most posh area in the city but thanks to the lethargy and lack of planning of the Clifton Cantonment Board and the DHA management, these days it ranks quite low because many roads are inundated with water.

The worst off is the area around Seaview Township’s first two sectors, Khayaban-i-Mujahid, Saba Avenue and the part of Khayaban-i-Shamsheer which joins the Beach Avenue. This is all the more surprising because due to its proximity to the sea, drainage of rainwater should not have been a problem at all.

The current desperate situation is partly due to the fact that for the last so many years a huge plot next to the multi-storied building – Silver Sands – has remained excavated. To lay the foundation the owners dug the plot about 20 feet deep. The construction could not proceed because it was in violation of the DHA building rules.

Multi-storied buildings are not allowed at least as far as the laws on paper are concerned. Silver Sands, like other three housing blocks in Phase 5 — Florida Homes, Country Club Apartments and Galaxy Skyline – were built in contravention of the DHA laws. They could not have been demolished. The three complexes have people living there for years, while Silver Sands has of late got a super market and showrooms of electronic goods on its ground floor. The upper floors have remained incomplete for almost a decade. No one would like to touch them with a bargepole, in view of their shady position. Whenever rain pours, the excavated plot overflows with water and the owners of Silver Sands, whose basement is adjacent to the plot, start draining the rainwater onto the main road, with the result that the water inundates the surrounding area. They did it last year and they did it this year too. The results were devastating.

On Sunday morning the Cantonment Board and the DHA dug up the roads so that the rainwater could flow into the sea, but the speed is woefully slow and the situation has remained almost unchanged. If anything, the traffic flow has been impeded.

Talking to the affected people who had gathered at the junction of Beach Avenue and Khayaban-i-Shamsheer, a high-ranking official of the DHA said on Sunday morning that it was because of “the intensity of record-breaking rains” that the situation went “out of control”.

“A century-old record is broken,” he added. No one in the audience had the presence of mind to ask him from where he got his facts.

The latest is that the Cantonment Board has made way for the rainwater in the locality to fall into the deep empty plot, much to the dismay of the owners, who insist that the authorities should have found a permanent solution to the problem. They say that they have invested so much money in pumping out the rainwater.

However, as things stand now, unless one is in a raised vehicle one cannot leave the locality. Even make-shift ambulances that abound in our city cannot navigate through these roads. This writer, after a 15-hour fasting, tried to reach a laboratory on Saturday only to find his car stalled. The idea of fasting for 15 hours once again is unsettling, to say the least.