Light rain places heavy burden on Karachi’s tattered infrastructure

A third and less powerful monsoon system that caused light to moderate rains in Karachi on Wednesday and Thursday finally abated after causing light showers on Friday afternoon in different areas of the city. However, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said light rain was still expected in Karachi on Friday night or even on Saturday evening due to localised developments.

An official of the PMD said the monsoon system that was causing rain in Karachi since Wednesday weakened on Friday and would exit the city by Friday afternoon, but added that light rain was still expected in the city on Friday night and even on Saturday evening due to localised developments.

As Karachi’s different areas were still recovering from the two-day spell of rain under the influence of a monsoon low pressure area, light showers on Friday afternoon caused inundation of roads in some areas of Karachi, which resulted in vehicular traffic jams, power outages and miseries to people.

A large portion of University Road was flooded due to rainwater in front of Safari Park and caused long queues of vehicles after light showers lashed the areas at around 1:30pm.

Rainwater also accumulated in different areas of Gulistan-e-Jauhar, near the NIPA flyover, Rashid Minhas Road and some other parts of the city.

Power outages were reported from different parts of the city soon after rain started and people on various social media platforms lodged their complains with the power utility, saying that they had been without electricity since Friday morning.

People from several city areas complained that they had been facing the low voltage problem since Wednesday when rain started in the city. They added that many electrical appliances were damaged due to fluctuations.

Karachi received intermittent showers on Wednesday and Thursday, with around 55 millimetres (mm) of rain recorded at North Karachi, 42mm in Saddar and Jinnah Terminal, and 32mm at Landhi, Keamari and Surjani Town by Thursday morning, while rain upto 4-6 millimetres was later recorded in different areas of the city.