Driving on the moon

These geniuses at DHA thought of a new way and style for sewerage lines: Right in the middle of the road and lined with gaps for the water to fall through.

For the past few months, driving in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA) has turned into a tough and expensive task. Tough, because of the ‘brilliant’ sewerage lines laid right in the centre of the roads. Cities are planned with the future needs in mind and these people couldn’t even plan an area!

These geniuses thought of a new way and style for sewerage lines: Right in the middle of the road and lined with gaps for the water to fall through. As if the water will collect at every gap between these lines. There are countries in the world where it rains more than half the day, every day, but even they couldn’t have come up with such an ingenious idea.

Then again, the lines (i.e. the gaps) are opposite the running of the tyres; they are horizontal! So when the tyres bump into every gap, it gives you a feeling of being on the moon. There is no way you can save yourself from these slabs because at least one side of the road is lined with parked cars, leaving only a section of the road for you to drive on: the sewerage lines slabs. And I haven’t even started on the wear and tear of the tyres, which costs a fortune for a middle-class person who strives to make both ends meet. Living in the Defence Housing ‘Authority’, I often wonder where the authority is!

Lastly, in other parts of the world, a new plan or experiment is always carried out on a certain and limited area, to judge its results, rather than make the whole area suffer. I question the ‘mastermind’ of this plan, if he even gave it a thought before going along with this idea and wasting heaps of money. Around three billion rupees were spent on the sewerage scheme for the authority and there are reports that it may need some more fine-tuning or modification.

What a waste of taxpayers’ money!

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15th, 2010.