Monsoon rain floods houses in Peshawar

The Express Tribune

Monsoon rain early Thursday morning left a trail of devastation as clogged drains could not seep out rainwater in many areas of the city. The deteriorating sanitation system exposed how ineffective the municipal administration was in their ability to cope with the torrential downpours. After a scorching heat wave and consistently dry weather for three months, Peshawar received 59 millimetres (more than two inches) of rainfall. Assistant Meteorologist Malik Iftikhar said that the rainwater had been accumulating since late Wednesday night. Residents in the city had suffered throughout the month of Ramazan under hot and humid temperatures. Although belated, the monsoon weather brought some respite from the heat, but people faced another problem with waterlogged gutters and chocked drains. This contradicted earlier claims of city authorities of having tackled the problem. The situation has been worsened because the garbage-cleaning staff of Town-I has been on strike since August 16 following non-payment of salaries. When contacted, Town-I Municipal Inspector Adnan Khan said that he had not been given salaries for disbursement yet. The worst affected areas where rainwater flooded houses were Nishtarabad, Gulbhar, Sheikhabad, outer Ganj and Zargarabad. Many locals spent the night removing carpets, curtains, furniture and electronic appliances from the lower floors of their houses. Those affected say that they warned local municipal officials before Eid to remove silt and garbage from banks of drains but no one took notice. “We told the civic body to clean up the piles of garbage that had been left for weeks,” Ghulam Mustafa, a resident of Gulbhar, told The Express Tribune. “Now we are suffering because of their inefficiency,” he said. Despite receiving instructions from the District Coordination Officer (DCO), many government employees were missing from their duties as rain poured down on Thursday morning. The situation is likely to aggravate because according to a met office forecast, another wave of rainfall is expected on August 28, which could further worsen the cleanliness issue in the congested city.