Rains expose poor working of civic agencies

Karachi's civic infrastructure, suffering from years of neglect, has badly damaged after the monsoon rains. Experts said that there is a need of coordination among all civic agencies to deal with rains. All the stakeholders such as KMC, KWSB, and Sindh Building Control Authority and law enforcement are needed to work together to deal with rain related issues, they added.
This year, Karachi is facing the torrential rains and despite early warning issued by Met office, the civic agencies were failed to make the required arrangements to deal with it. After the first spell of rain in July, the city's civic infrastructure was badly disturbed and later on behalf of the federal government the Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs announced a 'Clean Karachi' campaign. However it appears nothing has been done to improve the city's ability to cope the recent rainfall.
The city's major 38 rain drains are still clogged with garbage as Mayor Karachi Waseem Akhtar has expressed his helplessness to do anything about it, citing a paucity of funds and machinery equipment.
Urban flooding is a chronic issue in Karachi which is compounded by the weakness of other infrastructure such as a leaking and clogged sewerage system, growing piles of garbage and a dilapidated road network.
A number of vital services including ambulance, water supply and electricity are affected when it rains and the civic infrastructure collapses into gridlock. Urban experts have warned that the consequences will be much more severe as the city's dilapidated roads are still a disaster waiting to happen.
Besides a number of roads, the city's power infrastructure was also hit during the last spell of rains and a lot of it was because of urban flooding in low lying areas, which severely hampered restoration efforts.
Encroachments are a major hurdle for periodic maintenance. On the other side, there has been no visible response from agencies concerned to ensure drainage of standing rainwater and compliance of building control laws so the power utility can get a safe and secure working environment.
After some incidents in the last rain spell, the power utility has also conducted a safety awareness campaigns to educate the people of Karachi about the safety measurers during the rain.
These awareness drives also need to focus on the fact that when vital services such as water supply and communications networks or electricity supply fail and the root cause is the flimsy urban infrastructure which is unable to cope the situation.
There have been numerous calls for action and combined efforts and recently K-Electric has approached to Karachi Commissioner for joint work with all civic agencies to ensure that the chaos that emanated after the last rains is not repeated.