Providing shelter just not enough

Gulshan-e-Maymar refugees agree that providing shelter is just not enough and they need electricity and water as well.

KARACHI: All the survivors living at the Labour Square apartments relief camp in Gulshan-e-Maymar agree that providing shelter is just not enough and they need electricity and water as well.

Several residents have claimed that government officials come every day to inspect the camp but to no avail. Whatever orders they issued from the campsite have yet to be implemented, they complained.

A medical camp has also been set up at Labour Square, where a team of eight doctors and paramedical staff treats patients in one shift. The doctors admitted that they feel burned out after a 12-hour shift and they fail to understand how the residents survive.

They believed that electricity and water supply has worsened over the days. “I came in at 2 pm and will stay till 9 pm and there has been no electricity since 2:30 pm,” said Dr Ahmed Ali Memon, adding, “The situation is the same every day.”

“There is a standby generator available, but they only switch it on if an important official comes for a visit. Otherwise, it is kept off,” he added.

Even though, you can see piles of garbage inside the relief camp, the camp incharge DDO Revenue Sher Hussain Shah is adamant that the place is properly cleaned.

“The electricity breakdown occurred due to a shortage of diesel, which is provided by the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC),” said Shah. “I have been making efforts to solve the electricity issue but I am not a technician. This is the KESC’s responsibility,” he added.

Mother of 5 blind children struggles at camp

Waziran and her eight children fled their hometown, Shahdadkot, when the floods threatened to submerge their village. The father decided to stay back and the rest of the family made their way to Karachi.

Even in Shahdadkot, the family was struggling to make ends meet but since their stay in a makeshift hut in Mehran Town, Korangi, it has to make efforts every day to fetch food.

“We sold all our possession to raise money for a ticket to Karachi but now we don’t have anything to eat,” Waziran said tearfully.

To make matters worse, five of Waziran’s eight children are visually impaired. Her eldest daughter, Nusrat, was very young when she started to lose sight but when she grew up, she stopped seeing all together.

After Nusrat, Waziran’s three other children - Naeem, Tanya, Waseem and Fatima - also lost their sight. According to their mother, the doctors said that there is no cure for this condition.

Nusrat is now 25 and she feels restless at the camp. The memories of the floods still haunt her. “We were very poor and even now we only eat if we get food from somewhere,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28^th, 2010.