Finally realized the implications of Global Warming which Nat Geo was going on for the past decade. Destructive Rain and wind hit Karachi and all but annihilated the meagre infrastructure. It was 44 degree on saturday (23rd June, 07) and after the rain it cooled off only by a few degrees. Then on Sunday, again the city was pelted by with merciless rain. The death toll was 250 due to falling roof's, bill boards and electricution. Electicution deaths in Karachi seems ruthlessly ironic to me - people dying because of excess electricity and while they live, there is no electricity..... Let me explain......
When we talk of electricity in Karachi, the word that comes to mind is Load-shedding - a term which all my foreign friends are blissfully unaware of - means shedding the excess electricity load by simply switching off the electricity! Ingenius! Well we've been having 'loads' of that. This may seem harmless enough but in a city where the average temperature is about 2.3 degrees higher than last summer (just made that up!) this year the consequences, apart from a loss of productivity is the form of Power Riots.
Power Riots - a fancy name for a riot which is cauzed by lack of power (Trust the presswala's to create a sensational brand name!). I got caught in such a riot a couple of weeks ago. Around 10 p.m. on the evening of 13th June, I was driving through Garden East going to a friend's house. The streets after Anklesaria Hospital started to become congested with traffic and by the time I reached the Garden signal, traffic was not moving at all and had spilt over into the electricity devoid narrow lanes. Apparently the residents around Garden East had been rioting to protest the constant load-shedding. There were burning tires and broken glass from car windows on the streets. The buses, rickshaws, cars and motorcycles were trying each and every way to get out of the paralyzed traffic jam and were turning into small passages and pathways. Like them I also turned into one of the alleys, which had houses on both sides. The alley was pitch dark, with the only light coming from the headlights of my car. There was no electricity and residents - men, women, elders, toddlers - everyone was sitting out on the road. Their sweat-drenched faces were exhausted with the day’s toil, ruthlessly aggravated with the continuous load-shedding. It was a harrowing sight
Finally about an hour and half later, the traffic broke and I reached my destination, not before I had twisted and turned around in myriad dark alleys, all with no electricity and all with tired people sitting outside on the roads..
Driving back home later that night, I passed a well-lit Shahra-e-Faisal with all street lights on the four lane main artery well lit, along with all the advertising bill boards with strong flood lights, The final straw seemed to be Bagh-Ibn-e-Qasim - the recently inaugurated huge park near the sea-side in the middle of Clifton. I was aghast to note that each and every single light of that gigantic park was fully lit. And as if to rub salt in the wounds, there was not a single soul in the park. Upon reaching home, I found that there was no electricity there either.
It is still understandable that the KESC can not immediately produce enough electricity to cope with the growing demands of this sprawling metropolis. But it is simply not acceptable to have such a blatant and obvious lack of management of such a precious resource. Seems to me that indeed there is a dearth of electricity, but the far bigger problem is management. Public places such as parks should be shut or operate on minimal lights after 8 p.m. The lights on the advertising bill boards should be off at 8 p.m. and for conservation’s sake each third light on major roads should be on instead of all. Taking these measures should give the population some relief at night.
This is no rocket science. Just plain common sense - and it seems it is too much to ask of KESC or the Government of who-ever-the-hell-runs things around Karachi. The rioting is still continuing and now with the rains, seems that it will get worse.
Gene Kelly danced to 'Singin' in the Rain' a half century ago. Cant see any one doing that in Karachi any time soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment