In 2025 alone, Karachi lost twenty-four lives to the city’s neglected gutters, manholes and drains. Eleven people died after falling into open drains and nullahs, seven fell into uncovered manholes, including three-year-old Ibrahim, while six sanitation workers were effectively killed by a system that forced them to enter and clean toxic, clogged, raw sewage gutters with their bare hands.
It ought to be difficult if not impossible for all of us who live in this country to identify ourselves as human beings while silently watching these orchestrated and exploited deaths of fellow humans with such utter cruelty and inhumanity. We could, however reform this brutal governance system by taking at least three immediate steps.
1. Carry out a survey to count and digitise every storm water and sewage gutter and manhole of the city and allocate a unique ID code that identifies location, type (stormwater, wastewater, combined sewer), depth, size, pipe connections, material, installation date and the owner department.
2. Before the Sindh Government senses another opportunity for ‘Tragedy Capitalism’ — to obtain and blow up a fresh $50 million World Bank Loan (on pretext of gutters), it may be appropriate to publicly state that open-source GIS desktop software such as QGIS and Map Window GIS are available for free, for anyone to use for the management of manholes, storm drains, sewage pipes and sewage gutters.
3. Demand that the Sindh Government enact legislation banning all forms of manual scavenging and prohibiting workers from entering hazardous sewage gutters. The current practice is inhumane, violates fundamental human rights and must be replaced with modern mechanical and automated systems.
Naeem Sadiq
Karachi
