LARKANA, March 18: The choked main trunk of the drainage system, passing under the Karambagh Chowk, has been overflowing for the past three days, inundating nearby roads and by-lanes and forcing people to stay inside their homes.

The municipal authorities have failed in their efforts to clear the blocked drainage pipeline as the de-watering pump, installed here, was inadequate to cope with the situation.

Now, finding itself bogged down, the taluka municipal administration had begun digging another metalled road to unplug the choked pipeline.

Overflowing gutters have submerged roads in the vegetable market, fish market, Giles Bazaar, Empire Road and the Dharamshala Road.

A meeting of the Awami Councillors Alliance on Monday criticized the indifferent role of the taluka Nazim Nazeer Ahmed Shaikh and Nisar Ahmed Shaikh, chairman of the sanitation sub- committee.

A statement, issued by Mohammed Siddik Pirzado, Dr Sakina Gaad, Apa Sakina Chugtai, Amir Bakhsh Hajano, Dr Tanvir Gaad and others, said that instead of facing the situation, the taluka administration appeared to have gone on leave.

They demanded of the Sindh governor and chief minister to remove the taluka Nazim and the chairman of the sanitation sub- committee and institute an inquiry against them.

The accumulated dirty water, which has already created a very unhygienic condition in the city, could lead to outbreak of disease, they said, adding that stagnant water could also affect the foundations of buildings.

HOSTAGE RETURNS: Ghulam Yaseen Massan, who was kidnapped from Nasirabad town in January 2003, returned home on Monday.

Mr Massan, while talking with this correspondent, said that dacoits had released him in a thickly wooded area from where he had reached a village, whose name he could not remember, and phoned his family members from there to pick him up.