ON Tuesday, the heaviest rainfall in three years brought Pakistan’s capital and adjoining city of Rawalpindi to their knees. Three people lost their lives. Streets turned into streams. Hospitals flooded — officer ward at Benazir Bhutto Hospital and basement of Holy Family Hospital, including its gynae and paediatric departments, had to be evacuated. Rescue 1122 pulled sixty citizens from rising water across Rawalpindi. Leh Nullah surged to 29.5 feet, triggering flood sirens across the city. For hours, Islamabad and Rawalpindi simply stopped functioning.
This was not an act of God alone. It was the entirely predictable result of choked drains, blocked nullahs and decades of serious violations of Islamabad’s Master Plan that led to illegal infrastructures at places that were marked for artificial lakes in case of severe rains. Note that monsoon system is only intensifying with each passing year. The pattern is now familiar. Residents of Faisal Colony reported that in previous years, floodwater receded within minutes of the rain stopping. This time, it flowed through their streets like a canal for over six hours afterward. That is not simply “heavy rain” — it is a drainage system that has failed to keep pace with urban expansion and basic maintenance.
The Islamabad deputy commissioner himself pointed to nullahs choked by dumped construction slabs and housing societies whose negligence obstructed water flow. If the causes are already known, the continued absence of remedial action is inexcusable. This crisis was concentrated in areas the state is meant to protect most carefully. Old Airport Road — used for VVIP movement — reportedly received priority drainage, even as residential nullahs stayed blocked. If true, this reveals a governance failure more troubling than any engineering shortfall: infrastructure priorities skewed toward convenience for the powerful rather than survival for ordinary citizens.
The federal and Punjab governments cannot keep treating each monsoon as an unforeseeable emergency requiring only reactive rescue operations. Four measures are overdue. First, federal policymakers must plan Pakistan’s climate response on a 50-year horizon, modelling expected rainfall trends and building a staged national master plan for drainage and flood resilience — implemented with strict compliance timelines, not open-ended intentions.
Building control authorities across all provinces must be brought into this framework with real enforcement power, to stop the unplanned, mushrooming construction that blocks storm-water boxes — including structures reportedly built directly within nullah beds. Third, a comprehensive, technology-enabled audit of every nullah, storm drain, and sewerage line in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, using GIS mapping and remote sensing to flag blockages, encroachments, and capacity deficits before the monsoon arrives. Fourth, real accountability: when a housing society allows slabs to choke a nullah, or a boundary wall collapses from years of deferred maintenance, someone must answer for it — not merely be investigated after the fact, as Faisal Colony residents are now demanding.
Residents did not ask for VVIP roads to be protected while their homes, hospitals, and livelihoods went underwater. They are asking for basic competence: drains that drain, nullahs that flow, and a state that plans decades ahead instead of scrambling season to season. The next heavy monsoon is not a matter of if, but when. The question is whether the federal and provincial governments act before it arrives — or whether Pakistan’s cities keep waiting for rescue boats instead of functioning drains.
—The writer is Engineering & FM Consultant, based in Islamabad.(
