Provincial government's tall claims fall flat with overflowing gutters

Despite spending Rs3b on sewerage lines, people living in miserable conditions in Quetta

QUETTA: Despite spending billions of rupees on laying new sewerage lines and repairing the old ones in the provincial capital, overflowing gutters have laid bare the tall claims made by the government about Quetta’s beautification.

Masjid Road, Double Road and Prince Road where business markets are located, are the busiest streets of the provincial capital, but sadly they are inundated by sewage water. Despite government’s claims of effective cleanliness, metropolitan department’s workers cannot be seen anywhere on the streets.

Most parts of Quetta without water for five months

The provincial government and district administration had directed the concerned authorities to provide relief to the citizens in the holy month of Ramazan.

“Since October 2017, the sewage line outside my shop has been overflowing which has ruined my business during the final days of Ramazan in which the income is equal to the whole year’s earnings,” said Jant, a shopkeeper on Masjid Road.

“I regularly clean the road in front of my shop to pave way for customers, but since October 2017, I haven’t. The metropolitan staff should at least visit the Masjid Road,” Jant said.

The provincial government back in 2013 had spent more than Rs3 billion on laying sewage lines in Quetta, but the project was full of flaws as it made the lives of the people walking and driving on the streets miserable.



People could be seen walking on Masjid Road and Double Road with their trousers folded up to their shins in order to protect their clothes from the sewage water.

A resident of Double Road, Ashfaq Ahmed, said, “We change clothes twice or thrice in a day as they get dirty while walking on the streets which are filled with sewage water. We can’t even offer prayers on time during this holy month of Ramazan.”

During their tenures, three former chief ministers had pledged to address the challenges being faced by the people of Quetta. Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, Sanaullah Zehri and Andul Quddus Bizenjo paid several visits to the affected areas of the city and vowed to regain Quetta’s previous title of ‘Little Paris’, but none of them were able to make the metropolitan department perform its duty properly.

Quetta, with a population of 2.2 million, is among the worst cities to live in in the world as traffic jams and flawed infrastructure have made the lives of people miserable.