TWO days of rainfall brought much misery to the hapless residents of Karachi. Though Karachi is often dubbed a metropolis and a megacity, it is shocking to see how a few millimetres of rainfall can paralyse this city of millions.

The scenario witnessed on Tuesday and Wednesday was a familiar one that citizens of the city have experienced innumerable times.

As the rain began to fall, streets and roads started to flood, electricity supply was suspended (in some cases for over 24 hours) while chaos was witnessed on almost all the main arteries as commuters tried to pass through unnavigable roads.

At least six deaths were reported in rain-related incidents. Citizens would be well within their rights to ask why their city must descend into chaos every time a few millimetres of rain falls — especially when other cities across the world that receive more rainfall are able to control urban flooding.

The reasons for Karachi’s rain-related woes are numerous, but the main ones are bad planning and administrative neglect.

This week’s thunderstorms were not entirely unexpected; in fact, the weatherman had issued warnings in advance.

However, as is the norm in this country, officialdom’s performance is usually a reflection of the phrase ‘all talk, and very little action’.

For example, the Sindh chief minister said that Rs476m had been released for de-silting the city’s 30 drains.

Yet, as residents of Karachi would have witnessed, the ‘de-silting’ in many parts consists of taking out garbage from the storm drains — and dumping it right beside the nullahs.

It does not take a civil engineer to figure out that if solid waste is dumped next to a drain, instead of being disposed of properly, rainwater will carry it right back, choking the drain and exacerbating urban flooding.

In fact, it seems that all of Karachi is floating on a sea of garbage, with mountains of stinking, putrid solid waste spread across the city.

Sadly, the rain havoc and the lack of proper solid waste disposal are but by-products of administrative neglect — the provincial government, it seems, is not concerned with cleaning up this city and tending to its civic needs.

If the Sindh government were at all sympathetic to Karachi’s plight, this city would have a responsive local government in place, one that would be able to deftly handle civic problems.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016