ome of Islamabad is located on a natural passage for rainwater from Murree to Rawalpindi. The disregard for climate change and its impacts is now taking its toll on city life.

Rainy days are very busy for Haji Rafique, a car mechanic in Jinnah Garden. “Last week, I changed the engines for three cars. They had sucked in rain water on the inundated streets. In worst cases, this results in an engine failure.”

Haji goes to downtown Rawalpindi to purchase second-hand Japanese car engines. This has become a thriving business. Each engine costs around Rs 100,000.

Kaswar, a car electrician in I-9 Industrial Area, says the situation was not like that when he first came to Islamabad from Kabirwala in 2004.

“At that time, roads would not submerge the way they do now after every rain. The drains were functional, and cloudy weather was enjoyed, especially by people from drier areas of the Punjab,” he recalls.

Now things have changed and rains have become dreadful.

Hasnain Raza, an award-winning climate change documentary maker, is associated with the National Geographic. In August, when it rained in Islamabad, his house in the Airport Housing Society turned into a pool.

“We have been constantly pumping water out of our house. Everything on the floors has been damaged. This is a man-made disaster,” he tells The News on Sunday.

The Housing Societies Directorate of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had turned a blind eye to the conversion of storm drains into commercial plots. “Now everyone is paying the price for their greed,”says Raza. He has made documentaries on Rawal Lake and man-made environmental disasters in Islamabad.

Amir Baloch, a community leader in Ghauri Town, a squatter settlement considered the city’s largest, says the entire area has been inundated. “Many people are suffering from various health problems. Motor vehicles can no longer be plied on the roads even after slight rain,” he says.

When asked about the reason for the urban flooding, he says the construction of houses and plazas on rain drains was to blame for the problem. To cover up their connivance in the crime, the city authorities have recently slapped a fine on the owners of this illegal housing society.

“This fine is nothing compared to the price of a plot they create on a drain bed. This is how the city affairs are run,” Baloch says.

Water accumulates on roads, especially around housing societies most of which are not regulated by the CDA and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration.

To understand the situation, we need to look at the map of the area. On the map, Islamabad looks like a giant serpent hugging Rawalpindi on three directions. This is because of the uncontrolled construction.

Even old residents of Rawalpindi and Islamabad fail to tell exactly where the two cities separate from each other.

On one hand, this has given birth to serious problems of jurisdiction and law enforcement, and on the other, has compounded the already complex mechanism of regulating drains that crisscross between the two cities.

These streams run down from Margalla Hills and Murree to Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Islamabad is basically in the way of this water.

Urbanisation of these hills all the way from Murree to Islamabad has not only choked the drains, it has also polluted their water.

Poultry farms have been set up around Simly Dam en route to Islamabad from Murree. Every year, various reports on the quality of water in the water reservoirs of Islamabad, mostly fed by rainwater, show an alarming amount of toxins.

In Islamabad last year, a mother and her child died in a flash flood in the E-11 area. Construction on a storm water drain had triggered the flooding.

The situation becomes more tragic when these drains enter Rawalpindi where most of their beds have been encroached upon.

Former prime minister, Imran Khan, too had took notice of the phenomenon.

It was then believed that the CDA and other administrative bodies will mend their ways. Unfortunately, this year was no better than the last year and the year before that. Downtown areas of Rawalpindi were fully submerged. News TV channels aired footage of urban flooding around Lal Haveli in an attempt to solicit answers from former minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed.

But this is not a question for a single minister.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif used to visit submerged areas in Lahore when he was the chief minister of the Punjab. His successor Usman Buzdar would ride in a SUV during such visits.

No such scenes have been witnessed in Islamabad.

The city had elected Asad Umer as its MNA and he went on to become a very prominent government leader. Umar was quite fond of highlighting civic problems and urban flooding in Karachi, but has rarely spoken about the conditions in Islamabad and the destruction of its National Parks.

The city has a network of road interchanges being constrcuted right, left and centre nowadays. The prime minister hops from one mega project to another, issuing orders to speed up construction.

But little has anyone heard about plans to reclaim the city’s stormwater drains from land grabbers so that it may be secured against flooding.

The writer teaches development support communication at the International Islamic University Islamabad. He tweets @HassanShehzadZ and can be reached at Hassan.shehzad@iiui.edu.pk