|
The monsoon
deluge
The end-of-July rains that
started in various parts of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province on
the night between Tuesday and Wednesday might have provided the
general public with the much-needed relief from the unbearable
heat and humidity but the heavy downpour made the local canals
swell and overflow their banks thus causing a flood-like
situation not only in the suburban villages of Peshawar such as
Nasir Bagh, Regi and Badhber but also in other parts of the KP
province like Lower and Upper Dir, Swat, Charsadda and Pabbi.
Villages like Shahi Bala, Mathra, Shahgai, Sufaid Sang,
Pishtakhara and Patwar Bala were also affected by the flood
water. The images shown by various television channels indicated
that flood water which roared past the mud-built houses in the
affected villages might have wreaked havoc on the unwary
residents. Initial reports said that collapsing roofs had killed
more than 104 persons and injured several others. Low-lying
areas in Peshawar were so badly inundated that some of them were
completely cut off from the rest of the City. Localities such as
Sardar Colony, Kohati Gate, Jehangirpura, Lahori Gate, Gulbahar,
Namak Mandi and Khyber Road looked like stormy streams. Speaking
by phone at 8-30am to a private television channel from his
Nowshera Cantonment residence, former head of Jamaat-i-Islami,
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, said that people in surrounding villages had
climbed on to the roof-tops to save their lives. He claimed that
he had been trying to contact the higher authorities in the KP
but nobody was taking his call.
Similarly, the flood-hit
residents of villages between Budhni and Pabbi complained to the
correspondent of another television channel that women and
children in their areas had been stranded in mud-built homes and
the only way to rescue them was to use helicopters or boats. The
busy Sooray Pul Chowk near the Balahissar Fort was flooded with
rain water and the otherwise elite Daewoo Bus Company not only
had to suspend its local shuttle service for Hayatabad but also
cancel the scheduled departure of its coaches for Rawalpindi and
Lahore. The strange thing about the arrival-departure phenomenon
was that the junior staff taking phone calls of the travellers
for reservation of seats was totally unaware of the actual
position and was dishing out sheer disinformation to the general
public. When some female passengers tried to register their
displeasure, they were informed that the terminal manager had
not arrived into his office even up to 11am on Thursday. The
phone and internet services did not work on Thursday and
Minister for Information and Public Relations, Mian Iftikhar
Hussain, said that floods had destroyed the necessary
infrastructure. The affected villages are badly in need of clean
drinking water, medicines and supplies of food. In most
villages, the residents are usually caught unawares by
torrential rains and flash floods. Devastating floods, for
instance, hit the nearby villages badly some years back when the
canal flowing by Bashirabad on Pachagi Road overflowed its banks
and the rushing waters took along refrigerators, sofas and even
the livestock. Dare-devil spectators tried to retrieve some of
the household items by diving into the water from the small
bridge located between Board Bazaar and Phase III Chowk but,
noticing the ruthlessness of the hostile waves, swam back to
safety. As far as the human aspect to the present monsoon deluge
is concerned, there is rhetoric galore all over the place to
show solidarity with the flood-affected people but practically
no elected representative has so far bothered to visit the rural
belt to see who has lost what and where. The culture of
announcing relief funds for calamity-hit countrymen has earned
some sort of infamy in the sense that little or no monetary aid
happens to land in the right pockets. Therefore, instead of
depending solely on government pledges, the civil society and
charity organisations should come forward and stop the otherwise
seasonal floods from worsening into a major human catastrophe. |
