Lyari residents hold protest rally against running of drug dens

Although peace has returned to Lyari after the law enforcement agencies’ successful crackdown on criminal gangs, the locals are now protesting against drug peddlers resuming their activities in different parts of the city’s oldest town.

The residents complain that parts of Chakiwara, Kalakot, Rexer Lane, Singo Lane, Rangiwara and Shah Baig Lane have become the hub of drug pushers’ activities, as addicts can be seen wandering these areas’ narrow lanes to buy different types of narcotics.

They also claimed that dozens of drug dens have been operating in these areas. On Saturday evening a large number of residents and civil society and political activists participated in a rally organised by the Lyari Awami Mahaz, a local civil society initiative, to protest against the open sale of narcotics in different localities of the town.

The rally, which was aimed at pressuring the authorities, including the police, to take action against drug peddling and to create awareness, started from Aath Chowk and ended at Chakiwara Chowk.

A number of prominent figures, including Awami Workers Party central leader Yousaf Masti Khan, journalists Saeed Sarbazi and Arif Baloch, trade union leader Usman Baloch and activists Abdul Wahid Baloch, Sajid Buledi, Zahid Barakzai and Asghar Dashti, joined the protest to support the campaign against drug pushing.

The rally’s participants said poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, lack of civic amenities and years of neglect have turned Lyari into a breeding ground for social evils, with drug addiction being the most harmful of them. “Although peace has returned to the area, now one of the main problems here is the sale of narcotics,” said a protester.

One of the rally’s participants also referred to the popular movement by Lyari’s youth in the 1980s against drug peddlers, saying that the area needs such campaigns to be revitalised with the support of the civil society, political groups and residents.

These areas are riddled not only with drugs but their sellers as well and their nefarious activities pose a threat to the health and well-being of the youth and their families, said the protesters.

The activists argued that efforts to cleanse the localities of numerous crimes, including the

drug trade, have not been very successful because of the nexus between the drug mafia and government and law enforcement officials.