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While the town administration claimed to have spent Rs 454.379 million on development work during fiscal 2006-07 and 2007-08, the poor, mostly illiterate thus unquestioning people of Keamari Town are still compelled to brave a dilapidated civic infrastructure for an indefinite period.
A short visit of two union councils, one and three, of the Keamari Town would reveal that there is no concept of a road from Post Office, which is located in Jackson Bazar, to Okhai Colony in the said UCs.
Hussain Bukhsh Road, which ranges from Post Office to Padar Ground near KMC School, presents the worst example of a poorest road infrastructure in the poverty-stricken Town, which is home to around 1.32 million people, mostly uneducated belonging to labour class.
For the last several years the town and UC administration of Keamari have not been able to provide even a reasonable standard of living to Keamariites in the face of civic infrastructure and basic necessities like roads, water, sewerage, etc.
"The roads in Keamari specially from Dak-Khana (post office) to Padar Ground are so dilapidated that they reduce the lives of our vehicles to half," complained Mohammad Amin a rickshaw driver from UC-1. The town administration has, however, claimed to have invested Rs 210 million and Rs 244.379 million during 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively to develop civic infrastructure in the town.
According to town administration it had allocated and spent around Rs 48.552 million during the last fiscal year on the improvement and construction of main roads, small streets, water, sewerage, etc in UC-1 (Bhutta Village) and UC-3 (Keamari).
The said development work in UC-1 and 3 cost the town administration around Rs 17.127 million and Rs 31.425 million respectively during 2006-07, it added. Mohammad Shehzad Sheikh, who works as a computer operator in a private firm, however, rejected outright the idea that the town administration had made any investment for development of the area.
"Look at our roads... they are like trenches... you can not use them for driving a patient with stitched wounds to the hospital... I don't see any investment in infrastructure development," Sheikh wondered.
Further, leakage of water from a clumsily laid underground pipelines is another permanent source of trouble for the area residents. The leakage is not only putting a great quantity of potable water in waste on almost daily basis, but it has also made life tremendously miserable for the pedestrians and drivers in UC-1. The broken roads can be seen flooded with potable water, which is the matter of life and death for Keamariites who can not afford laying highly expensive water pipelines, whenever the water-thirsty UC-1 gets its turn for water-supply arrived.
"The government should repair the broken pipelines which leave no space for us even to walk specially when it's Jumma (Friday Prayer) and people have to come out for offering prayer," Mohammad Ayub demanded.
Sher Ali Yousaf from Samaji Tanzeem Road also slammed the town administration for a lackluster response towards public welfare. "They are not interested in solving our problems and unfortunately the people also don't raise their voice against the government's lackluster response," Ali lamented.
When contacted Saleem Qadri Nazim UC-1 clarified that dilapidated roads of his UC were awaiting a permanent solution for water scarcity. "We can not construct the roads until we get the longstanding problems like water shortage resolved," Qadri explained.
It is worth mentioning here that the Keamari has long been facing a drastic scarcity of water and the poor residents have to pay at least five rupees for a gallon of potable water to fulfil their need.
Town Nazim Humayoun Mohammad Khan also came up with the same answer saying that the roads like Khussain Bukhsh and Katchi Para etc would be constructed after curtailing the water shortage. "We would undertake construction of the roads as soon as we get the problem of water shortage resolved which would take further 20 to 25 days," said the town nazim without giving a specific date for commencing the construction work.
When asked if he though the problem was longstanding and should have been addressed long ago, Humayoun referred to "certain hurdles". "There have been certain hurdles which prevented us from an early completion of the projects on water scarcity... let's say the elections which spoiled our three to four months," claimed the town nazim.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2008

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