KARACHI: Environmentalists and residents from across the city, including Clifton Block 5 Residents Association, Clifton Defence Community (CDC) and Karachi Residents’ Community (District South), gathered at the construction site of Nehr-i-Khayam on Sunday to protest the building of a commercial belt there.
Standing firm against the backdrop of a big yellow digger machine hard at work and a reversing concrete mixer truck, the protesters held up placards with messages such as ‘Violation of Supreme Court orders’, ‘No food street on Nehr-i-Khayam’, ‘What are you building? Share the plan publicly’, ‘Don’t suffocate our waterways’, ‘Narrow drain equals massive flood’, ‘Boat Basin Se Gutter Basin’, etc.
Founder and CEO of the Clifton Urban Forest, environmentalist Masood Lohar lamented people who call themselves architects, engineers and town planners but don’t really know what they are doing. “Nehr-i-Khayam is a natural link between the Obhayo Lagoon and the Gizri Creek. You can’t mess up with the marine ecosystem. If you do, you brace yourselves for floods, storms and tsunamis,” he pointed out.
Quoting the late Dawn columnist and social activist Ardeshir Cowasjee from his column published on Sept 10, 2006, one of the protesters and members of the Karachi Residents’ Community (District South), Rasha Tarek, said that he had called Nehr-i-Khayam “one of the major lungs of the Clifton area”, intended “to carry rain and/or tidal water and not sewage into the open sea”.
Environmentalists, activists gather at construction site; say protecting city’s drainage infrastructure, channels, open banks is everyone’s concern
Reminding the gathering that Nehr-i-Khayam is an integral part of Boat Basin and Karachi’s drainage infrastructure and that its channel, open banks and surrounding landscape are shared public assets whose protection concerns the entire city, she demanded an immediate stop to the ongoing construction, which would narrow and alter the channel and its banks.
Rumana Khan, another protester, said that the people of this country are bearing the brunt of wrong decisions made by the government in the past too. “For instance, building dams in all the wrong places while restricting the natural flow of rivers. Then you get flash floods that destroy villages and settlements,” she said.
Hummaa Ahmad, who lives in the vicinity, wondered how come a seemingly big commercial project such as this has no public project information board installed anywhere. “We want to know exactly what is being constructed here. We want full disclosure of the approved designs, land boundaries, environmental assessments, Sepa decisions, contracts and expenditure regarding the project,” she demanded.
“It is illegal commercialisation,” said another protester Sheeraz Qureshi, whose family has resided in Clifton Block 5 for the last 40 years. “You cannot build a dense commercial area in the middle of a dense residential area. That way you disturb all the residents,” he said.
Echoing him, Dr Nadia Kiran, a resident of one of the apartments overlooking Nehr-i-Khayam, said, “We have heard that they are going to narrow the drain and build a food street over it.
“The resulting traffic, rush and noise every day and night will destroy our peace of mind,” she added.
“As it is, the authorities look the other way while allowing untreated waste to flow to the sea through drains such as Nehr-i-Khayam while overlooking the negative impacts of it on marine life,” said Humaira Khan of the Clifton Defence Community and Clifton Block 5 Residents Association.
“Whatever way you see it, it is encroachment, plain and simple! Building commercial belts is not the job of the Sindh government, which should be more concerned about saving the environment than contributing towards destroying it,” she said.
CDC President Abdur Rehman pointed out that there have been previous attempts to encroach on Nehr-i-Khayam, too. “Basically, it seems that it is the government’s priority to make money one way or the other,” he said. “Water streams or flowing waterways anywhere should be seen as a gift of nature but sadly we love to encroach upon them or constrict the flow.
We are constructing roads and big buildings but for some strange reason we don’t build a proper infrastructure for the flow of water, be it clean or sewage water. Lyari River and Malir River are sitting examples of the ill-will of our rulers. Then when the city drowns after a little bit of rain they say ‘more rain means more water’,” he shrugged.
The protesters, who also included Elia Qazilbash, Syed Tipu Sharif, Shumaila Dawood, also demanded full financial disclosure of the project, said to be announced at Rs500 million.
They said that this must include the approved budget, funding sources, contract scope, contractors, payments and actual expenditure.
Their further demands included protection of the channel’s storm-water capacity and public open space, no shops, food street or other commercial encroachment on the channel land, proper sewage treatment before discharging wastewater into the sea and an independent scrutiny of drainage and environmental impacts and meaningful public consultation before any decision on further works.
When contacted, a KMC spokesperson told Dawn that the project was being executed by the local government department and it had nothing to do with the KMC or Karachi mayor.
Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2026