Drug addicts, thieves ruin city’s urban facilities
The urban facilities of Karachi, which already suffers from poor infrastructure, are under the attack of drug addicts and habitual thieves.
After stealing iron sheets of the pedestrian bridges, electric poles and underground cables, the thieves have shifted their focus to the protective walls of small bridges to retrieve iron bars by breaking the cemented structure.
Due to the lack of measures by the city administration and the concerned government departments to protect the city infrastructure, habitual thieves and drug addicts face no hurdle in carrying out their obnoxious designs of taking away steal bars.
Thieves in gangs and individuals are on a mission to destroy the city and there is no one to stop them.
The double safety wall of the bridge built on Malir River between Shah Faisal Colony and Korangi, which connects the two major populations of the city, is also one of such important infrastructures, where thieves and drug addicts are busy round the clock without any fear to turn it into a pile of debris.
The purpose of the double safety wall is to provide safe passage to the pedestrians crossing the bridge on foot.
This bridge is mostly used by the population of the rural areas and the slum dwellers around the Malir River, while this road has been serving as a fast lane for motorcyclists even during traffic jams, but now due to thieves, this road has become unsafe even for pedestrians.
The protective wall built on both tracks of the bridge has been broken and thieves have taken away the steel which is an evidence of the negligence of the Sindh government and the institutions responsible for the protection of urban infrastructure.
Residents of the area said that drug addicts and professional thieves use sledge hammer to break the wall in bright day light without any fear and take away steel.
During this time, important political and government figures including police and law enforcement agencies also pass through this bridge, but no one is bothered to take notice of the menace.
The video of breaking the Shah Faisal Colony-Korangi bridge in broad daylight and extracting steel also went viral on social media, but it failed to get the attention of authorities.
Citizens reacted to this video and said that Karachi has become an abandoned city, where the pace of development work has been going at an ant’s pace for decades.
No new projects have been launched in the city for decades and now the existing infrastructure has beenleft at the mercy of thieves.
Citizens demanded activation of the City Warden Force to protect the urban infrastructure, should be taken action against those who buy stolen goods and steel to protect the lives and property of citizens from the risks posed by destruction of infrastructure.