The Plight of Karachi Roads and Story of Failure and Incompetence
One of the main artery of the city, MA Jinnah Road which links the city to the port and numerous business hubs come along its way, experience excessive traffic, causing congestion both during on and off peak hours.
KARACHI: The third most populated city in the world, Karachi, is a canvas painted with a picture of dilapidated infrastructure, broken roads and appalling public transport.
Broken roads across the city have made it extremely difficult for the people to travel.
Overflowing sewers, pothole-ridden streets, etc., show the failure and incompetence of the relevant authorities.
The material used in roads’ repair work is usually of low-quality. After a month or two, commuters start facing the same problems.
It has been decades since we last had a comfortable and smooth ride on the city’s streets. The recent monsoon season also contributed greatly to the destruction of roads.
It is a fundamental right of citizens to have a better road network. The current road conditions are the main reason for vehicles’ damage and an increase in road accidents. The authorities concerned must look into the matter and take necessary actions to overcome the problem.
A US-based News Agency, Bloomberg, declared the metropolis’s transport system as the ‘worst in the world’ and the city as a ‘political orphan’.
Besides absence of a mass-transit system in a city home to over 20 million people, the hollow roads of the megacity mar its remaining beauty.
One of the main artery of the city, MA Jinnah Road which links the city to the port and numerous business hubs come along its way, experience excessive traffic, causing congestion both during on and off peak hours.
But interestingly, the Sindh Government Spokesperson Murtaza Wahab recurrently shares photos on his Twitter account of roads being carpeted. However, the cherry-picked photos shared by the government official cannot overshadow the reality.
#SindhGovt has initiated work on rebuilding the Textile Avenue, SITE Karachi. It is one of the 18 new roads being built by Sindh Govt in SITE Karachi area pic.twitter.com/y3bWR5skvb
— Murtaza Wahab Siddiqui (@murtazawahab1) November 2, 2020
Therefore, News360 Correspondent Abdul Qaidr Mangrio carried out a survey of Karachi to see if assertions made by Bloomberg were authentic.
Not to his surprise as a local of Karachi, the correspondent found them be all true and the photos he took of different thoroughfares in Karachi vindicated the foreign magazine’s claims.
Below is a photo representing the abysmal condition of a main road between Karachi Civil Hospital and Jamia Cloth Market in the city centre.
Further, the locals of Urdu Bazaar area in the metropolis told News360 that the roads in their locality had never been pothole-free for the past decade.
“The government carpets the roads but they get broken again due to absence of sanitation”, they added.
