KARACHI is, as a banner headline atop a Dawn ‘advertisement supplement’ on a rainy wet July 31 boldly announced, ‘An oasis of harmony’. Across the eight columns, under this highly misleading headline was ranged a string of photographs of men and mismanagers (some of whose visages were viewed with apprehension).

It had rained on the afternoon of July 30, and on that supplement morn of the 31st many roads were already inundated, littered with stuck vehicles, and whatever traffic was moving was chaotic. The skies were loaded, it was raining, and it continued to rain for most of the day. The result we all know too well.

Much has been written about the Clifton Cross and the misadventure of the Karachi Port Trust in the form of the Clifton underpass. We have seen in our press each rainy day last week photos of the havoc wrought by mismanagement and greed and ignorance, and we have seen Governor Ishratul Ibad, City Nazim Mustapha Kemal, and Sportsman Babar Ghauri wading knee-deep through a mixture of sewage and rain water. They did not impress, nor help — not at all.

Now we shall go back 33 years, all the way to 1973, to read what the then city planners had in mind for Karachi and specifically for the Clifton area :

“President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had given directives to the Government of Sindh that the development of Karachi should take place in a planned way and no effort should be spared to ensure recreational facilities for the people of Karachi. In compliance, various schemes for the redevelopment of areas and the construction of roads have been initiated and are progressing according to schedule. One of the special assignments was the re- planning of Kahkashan, KDA Scheme No.5, Clifton with the prime objective of developing it as a Recreational Complex. It is a matter of satisfaction that the Town Planning Department of KDA has studied the problem in depth and come out with a Revised Concept Plan fulfilling the broad objectives in view. The Revised Scheme was presented to the President on December 5, 1972, and was finally approved by him for implementation. This Brochure gives, in short, the design concept of the Revised Scheme and I am sure that the Project will be implemented on a top priority basis, providing an ideal Complex for Recreation for the people of Karachi.”

The expert of the day, who signed this preamble to the brochure, was that likable scoundrel Jam Sadiq Ali, minister for housing, town planning and local government of the government of Sindh.

We had good city planners in 1973 and Jam was astute enough to let them have their way. Of course, it goes without saying that he being a politician ‘grabbed’ whatever could be grabbed and ‘gave’ or ‘allotted’ many prime plots of land to those he felt were of use to him. However, what was important was that this in no way disturbed the basic planning.

The brochure covered by this declaration involves the Bath Island-Clifton area and the nine blocks of Kahkashan Scheme 5. The percentagewise ‘land use allocation’ of the scheme envisaged residential 27.0, commercial 2.3, educational 3.7, public buildings 2.2, boating basin 12.0, parks and playgrounds 19.0, boating channel 1.5, marine promenade 5.0, religion 0.5, oil pipelines 1.8, roads and parking 25.0.

The plan and the allocation left undisturbed and open, repeat open, the British-engineered, very necessary, storm water drain known by the local popular term ‘nallah.’ It opened up at its start from the other side of the Clifton bridge and flowed all the way to what became known as the Nahr-e-Khayyam. This open storm water drain remained open and safe as shown in ‘The Revised Layout Plan of Kahkashan Scheme 5’ drawn by the Directorate of Planning and Urban Development (KDA) in November 1985 which was updated with the drain still open by Draftsman Mukhtar Ahmad in November 1987 under the same directorate.

Open it may have been shown to be, however the slide had started in the late 1970s when portions of this vital storm water drain were misappropriated by ‘katchi abadis’ and illegal builders/developers, and illegal sewerage lines connected to it. The slide remained temporary up to and after 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf took over. But since the advent of another spell of free and fair elections followed by ‘democracy’ the corrupt (at worst) and the mediocre (at best) have taken over this fast growing semi-literate city of Karachi with a population now surely standing at somewhere around 15-16 million. The people are helpless on that score.

To deal with the overflowing water in the Bath Island and on Clifton roads, the storm water drain must be cleaned up, opened up, and reinforced to catch the water from the road gutters which must be connected to it, right from its start at the old golf course (near cantonment station), all the way as it weaves along past Glass Towers and the Hilal-e-Ahmer building towards the Nahr-e-Khayyam, on to the Boat Basin which opens into the sea. And in the process, all the illegally connected sewerage lines which fill this ‘nahar’ with stinking effluence must go.

What is equally important, vital in fact, is that the surreptitious filling up of the poetically-known Nahr-e-Khayyam be immediately stopped, that no commercial or residential plots be allowed to be developed thereon, and that sewerage connections be disrupted and connected to the existing or to-be-laid sewerage lines. The storm water must be allowed to flow freely if we are not to experience even greater disaster than what we faced last week.

The city nazims are not engineers but they must have at hand some experienced people who can explain to them the meaning of what is hereby being conveyed. This must be done before the next spell of rain.

As a starting point, the nazims concerned should get hold of a copy of The Sindh Govt. Gazette Ext. April 4, 2002, Part I, and turn to page 476, Chapter 11- Building Structures Design and Construction Requirements, section 11-5-2 : “No building plans shall be approved on open nallahs public sewers and the like.” This is simple language, abundantly clear, and should be understandable to even the most mentally ill-equipped of our city godfathers.

E-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk