Скачать или смотреть How Illegal Water Extraction Threatens Lyari Expressway In Karachi

This video report was part of the programme 'Grift' on Express News about illegal water extraction in Karachi's Liaquatabad area. We have subtitled it for Naya Daur's audience.

This is B-1 neighbourhood of Karachi’s Liaquatabad area, where the incompetent staff and corrupt officers of Water Board have failed to provide even a single drop of water. Out of compulsion, locals resorted to water boring but for the last one year, the boring in the area gets dried up.

How did the groundwater in the area vanish despite it being located near the Lyari stream?

This isn’t a huge secret. Because, there are hundreds of bores along the stream that have been selling the water extracted from 400ft underground. In an area where even drinking water is a rare commodity site industrial area is being sold water and in order to avoid this organised theft being called as theft, Sindh govt has given a licence of theft to the Water Board by issuing a notification.

Water theft is not new for the people of Karachi. But this theft is also endangering Lyari Expressway project completed in 15 years at the cost of Rs 44 billion. The bores are quite close to the Expressway bridges. Hundreds of these bores and the current of this water are enough to explain at what speed this water is being extracted.

Dr Gulraiz, a geology expert, tells how this extraction can affect the surface of the soil.

“I’m talking about subsidence. When you’ve emptied the entire subsurface horizon then even a fool would know that the grains contained water and air both, but you’ve extracted all the water. But the building’s structure is there with the same pressure. Then the grains will try to fill in the gaps. When the grains try to fill the gaps, it will reduce the volume of the aquifer and the soil. The building will sink”.

Shat is soil subsidence? Subsidence is a natural phenomenon, also called as sinking of the soil. There can be a number of reasons for this sinking. One of them could be speedy extraction of groundwater. This creates gaps between the rocks, sand, salts and clay in the soil. To fill this gap, the soil sinks lower. If there’s a heavy building on the surface of the soil, the surface fails to support the pressure and also sinks in. This is called subsidence. National Highway Authority’s Deputy Director Maintenance Hussain Shah told that he had conveyed the problem to the NHA chairman but the matters were moving slowly and not being paid much attention to.

On the other hand, Water Board MD lays the blame entirely on NHA. “Lyari Expressway is NHA’s property. If NHA feels, as it’s a national project and I also benefit from this project as a citizen of this city, let NHA come. Water Board isn’t the only institution responsible for it. If NHA feels that these bores can damage Lyari Expressway then it must get these bores cleared at the earliest. They can write to the government that this certain act might cause our bridge to collapse. So they should come”.

While everyone, from MD Water Board and Sindh govt to the federal govt institutions, is delaying the matter, according to experts, a terrible accident and the demolition of Lyari Expressway is imminent.

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