KARACHI: The main roads of Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, were under water on Saturday, with many parts of the metropolis hit by power outages, as heavy monsoon rains continued to lash the region.
The rains, which began with the onset of monsoon season in South Asia in mid-June, have already killed 116 people in Pakistan, with nearly half the deaths taking place in the country’s south and southwest.
People wade through a flooded road in a business district after a heavy rainfall in Karachi, Pakistan, on July 9, 2022. (AP)
Karachi, the capital of the southern Sindh province and Pakistan’s financial and economic hub, suffers from urban flooding each year, with people dying from drowning and electrocution, as the city’s clogged drains fail to empty water from the streets.
While local media channels showed rescue services using lifeboats to evacuate women and children, netizens said there has been little assistance from the local administration, as they shared video footage from impassable streets in the main parts of the city.
“All roads are flooded,” Wasif Shakil, a Karachi-based journalist, told Arab News. “There’s no government in the city, we are living on our own here in Karachi.”
Karachi Administrator Murtaza Wahab, who was sharing live updates on his Twitter account, said pumping stations have been used to remove the water, as drains were working at “packed capacity.” In some areas the pumps could not work as electricity had been cut off — an issue that he said was being resolved with the use of power generators.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has warned of more isolated falls and thunderstorms during the upcoming Eid Al-Adha holidays as monsoon currents continue to penetrate the region.
