Sindh province says prepared to tackle urban flooding as Karachi braces for heavy monsoon

KARACHI: The provincial administration of Sindh on Tuesday said it had made necessary arrangements to deal with urban flooding in Karachi after the country’s meteorological department forecast heavy downpour for the southern port city starting Thursday.
“Heavy rain will hit Karachi on Thursday and will continue till Friday,” Director Pakistan Meteorological Department Sardar Sarfaraz told Arab News.
Last year on July 26, Karachi experienced its worst flooding since 1931 when a deadly spell of rain killed at least 41 residents.
Authorities struggled for several days to drain water from people’s houses in affluent neighborhoods like the Defense Housing Authority and Naya Nazimabad, prompting protests.
While the met office said the city would experience heavy rain, it also added that the intensity of the downpour was expected to be far less than the previous year.
“If the rainwater fails to find proper channels to flow, however, it may create a situation in different parts of the city that may look like a flood,” Sarfraz warned.
Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, the provincial minister for information and local bodies, said his ministry’s subordinate departments had already been instructed to proactively deal with the situation.
“The Sindh government had already started cleaning major and small rainwater drains on May 20 this year and taken out 7,200,000 tons of trash before transporting it to various landfill sites,” he added.
“Preparations are complete, and we hope it will not be like the situation we witnessed last year,” a statement issued from his office quoted him as saying.
“Chocked drains have been cleared. The Sindh government is currently working on 41 big and 500 small drains of the city under third-party monitoring,” the minister said.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Karachi Naveed Ahmed Shaikh on Tuesday directed his deputy commissioners to immediately remove advertisement hoardings from the pavements of the city.
“All hoardings that are unsafe and may harm human lives during the rain should be immediately removed,” he said.
A large part of the city faced outages immediately after light rain began in Karachi on Monday morning.
However, according to an official statement circulated by the city’s power supply company, K-Electric (KE), electricity was restored after the first spell of rain was over.
“Approximately 80 percent of KE’s distribution network remained operational during the three spells of rain faced by the city,” added the statement. “KE’s ground teams were also mobilized to rectify localized faults as soon as the rains subsided.”
The company maintained its teams were fully prepared to ensure safety of people and uninterrupted power supply.
“As the Pak Met Department has forecast more rain in the upcoming weeks, we strongly advise citizens to remain safe and take all necessary precautions. Avoid leaving the house if there is standing water and maintain a safe distance from the electricity infrastructure at all times,” said the KE statement.