KARACHI: Where the water has been absorbed by the ground the roads are broken and where water is still standing people have placed bricks to step on to cross over to the other side.
This is Saadi Town and Sadat-i-Amroha Cooperative Housing Society after four days of the flood when residents who had fled the locality in a rush are slowly returning to their homes.
“Because of the dirty water getting into the underground water tanks in the buildings and houses, we are getting plenty of people with diarrhoea, sore throats, fever, itching and other skin problems,” said Dr Kamla Gandhi on Tuesday at a medical camp set up in the area by the Pak Land Housing (Pvt) Ltd.
“The fever can also be linked to malaria as there are now plenty of mosquitoes breeding in the stagnant water,” she added.
Dr Vinod Gandhi, her husband, also present in the medical camp, said that they also were residents of Saadi Town. “The gutter ducts started overflowing and then the water came very quickly and reached up to chest height in no time. We are educating people to refrain from drinking tap water. The Army and the Khidmat-i-Khalq Foundation are also going around supplying bottled and potable water to the residents,” he said.
“There was no time to escape. We were all surrounded by water within 10 minutes,” said Mrs Abdul Majid, another resident. “We have only recently moved to Saadi Town. As you can see it is a nice well-planned locality. We didn’t expect something like this to happen,” she said. “There were cars floating about in the water. We had never before experienced something like it. Two boats were busy moving people to dry land but we didn’t feel like leaving our home behind so we stayed.”
Kashif ‘Ustad’, a motor mechanic, said people had been pushing their cars all the way to his workshop since Monday morning. “Engines have ceased, clutch plates have slipped and bearings have caught fire due to short circuits. We are replacing parts. There is around Rs20,000 worth of work on each car,” said the mechanic. “And people are fine with it because it is just material damage. Others have lost lives in the disaster.”
Zahid Bugti, a tailor, said he had been through this earlier also. “Though there was very sparse population here then, I was here when a portion of the Hub Dam broke some two or three years back,” he said.
“When the water came this time, we were stranded here for a very long time even though it didn’t come inside our shop as we are a bit higher than the ground. But another tailoring shop was not so lucky,” said Sajjad Ali, ‘Master’ Bugti’s assistant. “The water flooded his shop and ruined all the cloth and sewing machines.
He can wash the cloth and return it to his customers but what of his sewing machines,” he said. “Similarly, there was a computer repair shop, which was also flooded. All the CPUs and monitors are completely ruined. It is too much damage.”
Supervising some damage repair by young boys outside his house was Haider Ali. “I am paying these children Rs100 each to bring in rocks and stones to fill up the portion of road just outside my gate slope so that I can take my car out and head for work today,” he said.
“It’s been parked inside for four days since the flooding. My boss has been calling me. He demands to know if it only rained over my house and why am I not coming to work,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
In Amroha Society, the entire household of a newly-constructed house in Block-C was busy washing the floors. “It had started to stink inside,” Nasir Raza, a resident of the house, remarked with a shrug.
Asked what really happened, one of his female relatives said: “These feudals and jagirdaars just don’t care. They broke this side of the dam deliberately so that it wouldn’t flood their lands,” she provided pointing far away towards the main road.
“Our cousin, Hameed Ali, drowned in the flood. His body was found in some bushes later. His burial was yesterday. Meanwhile, another cousin, Haider Abbas, is still missing. We are bracing ourselves for the worst.”