Even after a week of devastating rains, some areas of Karachi remain flooded, with residents of different areas of the metropolis still waiting for their respective authorities to take action.
One of the areas seemingly more affected than the rest of the city is the posh Clifton and Defence Housing Authority (DHA) neighbourhoods, which have been struggling with severe effects of urban flooding caused by last week’s torrential rains.
With protests against the authorities having little or no effect, the residents will now have to face a legal battle with the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC), which has slapped them with a criminal case over the protest they held to demand the drainage of the floodwater.
Residents of Clifton and DHA held a large protest outside the CBC office in DHA Phase-VI on Monday afternoon against the failure of the cantonment board authorities to drain the floodwater that has accumulated in their houses, streets and neighbourhoods over the past week.
Nearly 35 protesters have been accused of vandalism, intimidation and using offensive language against government institutions, with the names of 22 of them mentioned in the first information report (FIR) by the CBC.
“We don’t have power for eight days. Our basement and ground floor is still flooded. We are in a miserable state,” Fouzia, a resident of the Khayaban-e-Muhafiz area in DHA Phase-VI said.
She said that the cantonment board authorities had told them that there was no proper rainwater drainage system in the area, which is why they have been using gutters to drain the water.
“They also seem helpless. They say they pump in the accumulated water in huge tankers and flush it out into the sea, but still, the water level in the residential and commercial areas doesn’t appear to be decreasing.”
Asked if the residents had been compensated, Fouzia said there was none.
“Residents have been spending hefty sums on petrol because they have been without power for eight straight days.”
Nasima Saidol, an architect, who lives in a 20-year-old house in the same locality, complained that she had to spend Rs10,000 to drain the water from her basement.
“No one from the CBC helped us. They were too busy lodging an FIR against the residents,” she said, adding that the repeated paving of roads had raised the level of the roads higher than that of the houses and the drains in the area.
Saidol lamented that after the floods, all shops were closed, Internet access has been cut, and they had no power for a week. “The DHA is in a severely messy situation.”
Ahmed Zawar, a musician and lawyer, said he is looking at a loss of roughly Rs1mn because his basement music studio in the Shahbaz Commercial area in DHA Phase-VI was completely flooded.
He said that adjacent to his studio is an empty lot where the garbage of the entire commercial area is dumped.
Zawar said that despite several complaints to the DHA and the CBC, no one paid any heed.
After the heavy rain on August 27, he could not enter the area for two days.
He said when he sought the CBC’s help, he was told by the guards that all the officials were on leave.
“We had no option but to drain the water manually through buckets.”
After all these losses, when the CBC lodged an FIR against the protesters, it showed how much disconnected they were, Zawar added. “They made a mockery of themselves.”
Defence Society Residents Association president Sharafuddin Memon, who had also participated in the protest, said their association had asked the CBC to withdraw their FIR.
No official of the CBC was available for comment.
This picture taken on August 31 shows a resident of Defence Housing Authority (DHA) with a placard during a protest outside the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC) office.
