Residents of Karachi’s Lyari staged a protest against prolonged load-shedding in their area on Wednesday, blocking both tracks of Mauripur Road and stopping vehicular traffic, Dawn reports. Police were allegedly forced to fire tear gas shells and baton charge the protestors to clear the road.
The vice chairman of UC-7 in Lyari, Zohaib Baloch, who is one of the organisers of the protest, reportedly told Dawn that Lyari residents were facing up to 16 hours of load shedding daily, which exacerbated the crisis of water in the locality.
A large number of people, including women and children, staged a sit-in on Mauripur Road near Dua Hotel, blocking one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city.
A police officer, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that they were compelled to take aggressive action when protestors started ‘smashing’ cars and other vehicles on the road.
Baloch, however, claims that the police charged the locals with batons and fired tear gas at them in order to disperse the protest. He adds that their protest would continue until their demands were fulfilled.
According to Dawn, Baloch said that residents at Mira Naka in Lyari were protesting the same problem. Alas, this is not the first time residents of what is considerably one of Karachi’s oldest neighbourhoods have staged protests against insufficient facilities and provisions.
In fact, just earlier this week on Monday, residents of Lyari staged a protest against long hours of gas shortages, claiming that and the scarcity of fuel forces them to burn wood to cook meals.
The smoke that rises from the burning wood has caused sickness in children, while the infrastructure of houses has also been affected due to the use of wood fire.
Residents of Mandra Para, Rahiman Soomra and Baloch Mohallo placed gas cylinders and gas stoves on the road to protest, and the protestors included women and children.
Karachi Press Club president Saeed Sarbazi said that K-Electric might have reasons to resort to load-shedding on the pretext of ‘losses’, but a host of issues must be considered for the problem to be resolved, Dawn reports.
He added that residents of Lyari were of a working-class background and thereby could not afford exorbitant electricity bills, saying that the problem required a political and social initiative.
