Experts warn poor urban planning worsening monsoon flooding in Pakistani cities

Karachi [Pakistan], September 17 (ANI): The Urban Resource Centre (URC) on Tuesday organised a session featuring architect and town planner Arif Hasan and NED University Professor Dr Noman Ahmed, where experts discussed the worsening flooding situation in major Pakistani cities during monsoon rains, Dawn reported.

In his talk titled ‘Understanding the impacts of monsoon rains and flooding in Pakistan’, Professor Ahmed noted that the usual monsoon patterns have shifted.

“The average rainfall recorded this year in major cities such as Karachi, Lahore, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Sargodha, and Kasur was higher than usual,” he said, according to Dawn.

“The low-lying areas are flooded almost as soon as it rains and citizens find themselves surrounded by water, wondering how to save their belongings,” he observed.

He pointed out that despite inundated roads, rainwater drains remain dry. “It is because while building roads we left no margin or option for the water to flow out. New development projects have also blocked all drainage, as no one thinks about such things while planning construction,” Ahmed said.

Citing an example from the downpour on August 19, Ahmed said, “Even the vehicles brought in to clean or pump out the water from Sharea Faisal themselves stopped working as the water went into their engines.”

According to Dawn, he emphasised that rainwater should naturally channel into rivers or the sea through storm-water drains. Using maps, he showed how rivers such as the Sutlej and Ravi overflowed into nearby settlements. He stressed that the government must devise a comprehensive strategy for such events, restore natural drainage channels, and train and equip volunteer forces for emergencies.

Arif Hasan, meanwhile, explained how natural water flows are obstructed due to settlements and urban planning practices. “Water naturally flows down from the north or hilly areas to the sea in the south, but the areas it is supposed to flow through have townships now. One good example of this is Saadi Town and the other townships around it,” he said.

“You don’t meddle with nature like that. The first thing before building a settlement somewhere is to see if it is not in the way of the flow of water,” he added, as quoted by Dawn.

Hasan highlighted the URC’s 2020 survey of Karachi’s drainage system. “Some 30 of the 34 smaller drains flowing into the big Mahmoodabad drain were blocked. The Mahmoodabad drain, too, has 18 points from where the water should flow out, though there only four happened to be open, as the remaining 14 were blocked. So the outflow is weak,” he noted.

He also said rainwater from the roofs of around 2.7 million buildings in Karachi flows onto the roads, with no system in place to channel it into the Lyari or Malir rivers. “All one needs is some common sense here to come up with long-term solutions. Here we have rendered people homeless to clean the Gujjar, Orangi or Mahmoodabad nullahs and still the flooding issue could not be resolved,” he remarked.

“When coming up with solutions, we should not ignore or lose sight of the people,” Hasan reminded. “Come up with people-friendly solutions because with global warming the temperature in the mountains is rising, which means more water will flow down into the rivers while we here are senselessly settling down on floodplains,” he said, according to Dawn.

Earlier, Zahid Farooq, one of the organisers, said the August 19 rainfall impacted every citizen of Karachi, “rich or poor, in the same way.”

A one-minute video of flooding at NIPA Chowrangi was also shared at the session, showing that water still remains in several parts of the city. (ANI)

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