After experiencing heavy rainfall for the past few days, major areas in Quetta, Islamabad and Rawalpindi were flooded with as much as 13 feet of still-standing water. Roofs of houses collapsed while cars were swept away by fast-flowing water in the streets. Amid this chaos, at least nine people—including children and women—lost their lives. This tragic trend of death and devastation repeats itself every year during the monsoon season and still, there seems to be no development in infrastructure to prevent it.
A few days of consistent rainfall triggered flash floods in cities across the country, with pictures of submerged cars inundating the internet. Many civilians were victims of this flooding. Children drowned and several others had the roofs of their homes fall on them, killing them immediately. Electric cables fell into flooded streets and caused electrocution.
Drainage and sewerage are integral features of city planning and it seems as though they were overlooked when developing the urban centres of this country. It only takes a little water to cause flooding because the underground system to drain water and funnel it to reserves simply does not exist, even though it is the first process that must be considered when embarking upon infrastructural projects. Sewerage often gets clogged, causes a backflow, or leaks into freshwater reserves and pollutes them. This shows that our system is completely inept and lazy developmental planning has allowed for this inefficiency to assume a permanent character.
There is no doubt that we need to change the way we work and strategise. The deaths of nine people were completely avoidable. Innocent people going about their day should not have to pay for the inadequacies of successive governments who were expected to lay down the precursory mechanisms for development, at the very least. More responsibility for this issue—often brushed under the rug—must be taken and corrective measures must be implemented.
