Torrential rains in Karachi have once again incapacitated citizens. People are unable to get out of the house without the fear of being electrocuted or losing their vehicles to the flooded roads. Up until now, seven people have lost their lives to electrocution and five others died in the floods. The city of lights is being submerged in water as the local government refuses to bring any reforms for the betterment of the drainage and sewage systems which will allow the water to pass. The downpour is likely to create more and more problems for the people of Karachi as there is urban flooding and water is stuck on roads. The Sindh government claimed that the city’s storm drains were cleaned, however, overnight showers caused rainwater to accumulate on roads. Other than road blockages, the city of lights is without light as well due to power outages.
The government is trying to cover up its year’s worth of negligence by claiming that the chief minister and his team are in the field and working day and night to tackle this problem. They say teams have been deployed to remove the blockages and clear out the roads. However, what is alarming is that a city like Karachi which has always been one of the most important cities in Pakistan has been neglected so much that it cannot even survive an overnight rainfall. The monsoon season is not new to Pakistan. It has always been there and PPP has been ruling Sindh for a long time, the least they could have done was to install a proper drainage system in Karachi. Netizens have jokingly started saying that even the Indus valley civilization had proper drainage systems and Karachi doesn’t. This is a great failure on PPP’s part as it could have worked for the betterment of Karachi but it did not.
Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan with a population of 14.91 million people and it deserves better treatment. It is not only the downtown that is flooded but also posh areas. This shows that there is a problem in the system in the whole city and the government must fix it. Reports showed that efforts made by citizens themselves to take out water from two areas of Karachi cost them Rs10 million in 2020. Even if the citizens want to get the water removed themselves this time, they would have to wait until the rain stops. However, it is not the citizens’ duty to maintain the public property. Most citizens are tax-paying and law-abiding citizens who deserve to live in well-maintained areas and even if some do not possess the aforementioned qualities, it is the government’s duty to maintain the city. The government of Sindh must take quick action this year and in the future, it must plan and develop the city in such a way that such distressing events are avoided.
