#karachi news sewage water

[sleepysera]

Dec 18 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Pakistan: Explosion at bank kills at least 14 (BBC)

“An explosion at a bank in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi has killed at least 14 people, police say. Many others were injured in the blast, which is believed to have been caused by a gas leak from a sewage drain. Witnesses told local media many people were buried in the debris. There are fears the death toll will rise.”

Iraq: Flash floods kill 12 people (CNN)

“At least 12 people have died in flash floods caused by heavy rains overnight in northern and northeastern Iraq, Erbil mayor Nabz Abdulhamid told CNN Friday. Videos posted to social media show muddy waters flooding streets and homes in the city of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, and other towns in the province. Rescue operations are underway, and officials continue to search for several missing people, said Sarkawt Tahseen of Erbil's civil defense department.”

Netherlands: ‘Going into lockdown again’ to curb omicron (AP)

“Nations across Europe moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, including a new nationwide lockdown introduced by the Dutch government. Schools, universities, and all non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until Jan. 14 starting Sunday, caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Saturday night.”

US NEWS

Covid: Hospitals struggle as Covid beds fill (AP)

“Hospitals across the country are struggling to cope with burnout among doctors, nurses and other workers, already buffeted by a crush of patients from the ongoing surge of the COVID-19 delta variant and now bracing for the fallout of another highly transmissible mutation.”

Vaccine Mandate: Court allows Biden employer vaccine mandate to take effect (AP)

“A federal appeals court panel on Friday allowed President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for larger private employers to move ahead, reversing a previous decision on a requirement that could affect some 84 million U.S workers. The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overrules a decision by a federal judge in a separate court that had paused the mandate nationwide.”

Biden: Considers potentially stark shift in messaging over omicron (CNN)

“President Joe Biden's top health officials came to an afternoon briefing at the White House Thursday with a warning -- and a request. Sitting at the head of his long conference table surrounded by top members of his Covid response team, Biden listened intently as the officials laid out the contours of a looming coronavirus surge that could accelerate rapidly, swamp hospitals and send the country into another bleak winter.”

[fashionablepaperbag]

Typically the binladen biogas bunker is definitely the perfect place for your own home

The largest biogas fort within Pakistan is right now 50 metres long. The biogas procedure was founded in Khanh Hoa as a pilot project within 2020 and was extended to August last 12 months. Binladen, located in Lahore, was created throughout 1984. It has a undercover storage room which can certainly keep an enormous volume of throw away. The undercover storage space is loaded with different types regarding wastes, such as pee, feces, human hair, fat in addition to wood chips. This fort is known for the top quality of sewerage and is particularly this only one in Pakistan to experience a government license with regard to such waste. Binladen offers been the most applied biogas storage facility within Pakistan. Its subterranean safe-keeping area is so substantial that this can store right up to about three million lt of waste material. As a new company, Binladen gives other services as well. It manages waste management together with distribution for different government establishments. In addition to be able to its manure treatment facility, this as well serves as the required dumping point for throw away from Karachi, Islamabad in addition to Lahore. It will take waste from all of these places to be able to a landfill site for disposal. Often the binladen biogas bunker is likewise used by way of the local specialists. That is usually the primary place they will find when they call a local authority to collect sewage. There are plenty of people who use the binladen biogas bunker mainly because of the quality involving waste, and also for the reason that they do not need00 some sort of lot of space. If you consider the binladen biogas bunker is definitely the perfect place for your home, then you can easily easily begin one along with the help of some sort of pro. You need to help create your own binladen biogas production facilities should you wish to make your own blogs. That takes a pair of months to arranged up a biogas production service, but there are few advantages of developing a biogas production capability when compared with buying biogas. There is less investment to pay and if one can find problems with the biogis, then you definately do not have in order to waste too much cash. by throwing the waste products apart. In addition in order to the binladen blogs that are made, there are in addition some other throw away streams that go through the binladen. The particular city water is an additional supply of the city. Right now there are many waste products drinking water sources that the binladen could be connected for you to, and the binladen personal blogs can likewise be connected for you to the sewerage system. All these waste water sources are accustomed to generate electricity and to produce electricity. Binladen is not a really difficult place to be create together with can be completed within just a pair of to four several weeks. The moment this installation is usually complete, you do not have to spend a lot of moment on the set up like the process of unit installation is usually really straightforward. https://cameradb.review/wiki/Hieu_qua_xu_ly_cua_ham_biogas Typically the most difficult task throughout setting up the particular binladen is the digging in the pit and the filling in the pit. If an individual have a big place to work with, next you can hire a professional to dig the particular pit. If you perform not have a substantial area, then you can easily just utilize a small shovel to refill the opening with soil. Once the pit is filled, you may start digging it.

The next measure in the installation method is to fill up the pit using biogas, and even the lining on the opening. This process should end up being frequent until you acquire the biogas amount along with the ground. After often the filling is done, a person should then pour the particular biomass inside the biogas cellar. If the soil round the pit is shed, it is best to put a coating involving gravel on best of the soil consequently that the biogas does not flow outside. You should in addition set the layer of concrete floor around the bottom of often the gap. The biogas may decompose little by little inside the particular biogas basement, and there will be a regular circulation of biogas intended for months into the future. The biogas will start to decay inside the biogas basement when the blogs are not really kept at a regular level.

[newlahorerealestate]

Do you need House for sale in DHA Lahore | New Lahore real estate

DHA Multan has been introduced by the most famous and the leading housing social orders in Pakistan. It has offered different private and business plots to the inhabitants of Multan. A cutting edge and created city empowers the inhabitants to live in an extravagant, sound, and safe climate. In this climate, the occupants of DHA approach all luxuries of life and they can appreciate the best in class living. DHA is an outstanding housing society, which has dispatched its first undertaking in Lahore. DHA Lahore has been effective so it has dispatched ventures in different urban communities of Pakistan. For instance, Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Bahawalpur, and Quetta. This housing society was first created for the military and afterward it is for the public's utilization also. Multan is an antiquated city that has different recorded spots. This city is called as the metropolitan of south Punjab. Multan is the fifth greatest city in Pakistan. DHA Multan is situated at Bosan street close to Bahauddin Zakariya University. This housing society has two finishes one is Bosan street and the other is Marital street so DHA Multan a passageway entryway at the two closures. It includes stage 1 at the present time, which has various areas like A, B1, B2, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W1, W2, AND X. Therefore, in the event that you need to have DHA Multan 10 Marla plot, you can have it in different areas of DHA Multan stage 1. Real Estate Lahore

Do you need House for sale in DHA Lahore | New Lahore real estate

Is it true that you are looking house for sale in DHA Lahore? Extraordinary, you are in the correct spot. You can buy the DHA stage 7 plot in 4.1 Crore. It has 5 rooms, 6 washrooms, 2 kitchens, 2 TV relax, a drawing-room, a dining room, a powder room, and 2 storerooms. This house for sale in DHA Lahore has enough space to leave 4 vehicles. Different highlights include a lavish green grass, tile marble flooring, sitting and Bar B Q zone, sliding entryways. This DHA stage 7 house has CCTV cameras for the security of your house. It is a twofold story house, room, kitchen, dining, and drawing rooms have climate control systems. The proprietor has built a DHA stage 7 house, and it is affirmed by DHA. Besides, it has twofold glace windows for soundproofing, washrooms have rain showers, great rise, and an extensive patio. This house for sale has an ideal place, public venue, medical clinic, and memorial park are only five minutes away. This house has all the necessities of life like power, water, sewage, gas, and power. On the off chance that you need DHA stage 7 house for sale in 5 Marla, 10 Marla, 1 Kanal, and 2 Kanal, get in touch with us. Additionally, in the event that you need a home for lease in DHA, you can likewise have it. The rental costs for the homes are extraordinary. It relies upon your spending plan, necessities, prerequisite, and area. In the event that you lease a house in DHA Lahore stage 6, at that point the cost will be high when contrasted with DHA Phase 7. Besides, you can likewise lease a room in Lahore at affordable costs in some other territory of Lahore. There are numerous amicable property sites so you can contact any in the event that you need information regarding DHA. You can likewise visit at DHA Lahore official site to get any report regarding the costs of private and business plots.

[jewelrypaperbox]

The particular binladen biogas bunker could be the perfect place for your home

cach tinh the tich ham biogas The largest biogas bunker inside Pakistan is today 50 metre distances long. Typically the biogas operations was established in Khanh Hoa while a pilot project in 2020 and was widened to August last season. Binladen, located in Lahore, was created inside 1984. It has a good subterranean storage room which may retail store an enormous sum of waste. The underground storage area is filled with different types connected with wastes, like a stream of pee, feces, human hair, fat and wood poker chips. This fort is known for your top quality of sewage and is also often the only one in Pakistan to enjoy a government license to get many of these waste. Binladen offers been the just about all utilized biogas storage facility within Pakistan. Its subterranean safe-keeping area is so substantial that this can store up to three million litres of waste material. As a company, Binladen delivers additional services as well. That manages waste management plus distribution for different govt companies. In addition to be able to its manure treatment facility, it as well serves as the state dumping point for throw away from Karachi, Islamabad plus Lahore. It will have waste from all of these places to be able to a new landfill site for disposal. Often the binladen biogas bunker can also be used by the local specialists. The idea is usually the very first place that they find any time they call a local authority to collect sewage. There are several people who use often the binladen biogas bunker for the reason that of the quality of waste, and also for the reason that they do not require some sort of good deal of space. If you consider the particular binladen biogas bunker can be the perfect place on your home, then you can certainly easily start one using the help of a qualified. You need to help create your own binladen biogas production facilities should you wish to develop your own websites. It takes a pair of months to arranged up the biogas creation ability, but there will be few advantages of setting up a biogas production facility than buying biogas. There is reduced investment to spend and if there are issues with the biogis, then you do not have to help waste too much income. by throwing the throw away away from. In addition for you to the binladen blogs that are produced, there are in addition other waste material streams that get through the binladen. This city water is one more method to obtain the city. At this time there are quite a few throw away normal water sources that the binladen could be connected in order to, and the binladen blogs can likewise link in order to the sewerage system. All these waste water sources utilized generate electricity and to generate electricity. Binladen is definitely not a very difficult area to be set up and even can be completed inside a couple of to four weeks. After the installation is usually complete, a sensational scene to spend a lot of moment on the assembly like the process of unit installation can be rather straightforward. Often the most complicated task within setting up the particular binladen is the digging of the pit and the liner in the pit. If an individual have a big area to work with, next you can hire a new professional to dig often the pit. If you carry out not have a substantial area, then you could just utilize a small shovel to fill up the ditch with garden soil. Once typically the pit is filled, then you can definitely start digging it. Step 2 in the installation process would be to fill up often the pit using biogas, and even the lining with the gap. This process should be frequent until you find the biogas level together with the ground. After typically the stuffing is done, a person should then dump the biomass inside the biogas cellar. If the soil across the pit is loosened, you must put a level connected with gravel on leading of the soil and so that the biogas does not trickle out outside. An individual should furthermore put a good layer of solid within the bottom of this opening. The biogas is going to decay slowly but surely inside the particular biogas basement, and generally there will be a continuous circulation of biogas to get months to return. The biogas will start to decay inside the biogas basements when the blogs are not really held at a regular level.

[vilaspatelvlogs]

Electricity missing for four days in Karachi; The leader of the Imran government said - Water tanks are filling with sewage water, no hearing is being held | कराची में चार दिनों से बिजली गायब; इमरान सरकार के नेता बोले- वाटर टैंकों में सीवेज का पानी भर रहा, कोई सुनवाई नहीं हो रही

Electricity missing for four days in Karachi; The leader of the Imran government said – Water tanks are filling with sewage water, no hearing is being held | कराची में चार दिनों से बिजली गायब; इमरान सरकार के नेता बोले- वाटर टैंकों में सीवेज का पानी भर रहा, कोई सुनवाई नहीं हो रही

[ad_1]

Hindi News

International

Electricity Missing For Four Days In Karachi; The Leader Of The Imran Government Said Water Tanks Are Filling With Sewage Water, No Hearing Is Being Held

इस्लामाबाद3 घंटे पहले

कॉपी लिंक

कराची के पॉश इलाके डिफेंस हाउसिंग एरिया के एक इलाके में पानी से भरी सड़क। शहर की कई सड़कों की यही स्थिति है।

पाकिस्तान तहरीक-ए-इंसाफ के नेता शहजाद कुरैशी ने कहा- लोकल…

[technologyinfosec]

Plan to revamp Clifton’s Nehr-e-Khayyam pulled

Leading architect Shahid Abdulla heads the People & Nature Initiative (PANI), which had wanted to give the “dirty sewer” a new look. But it has decided to discontinue the project due to what he said was a lack of interest from the Sindh government. “I am completely fed up with the lethargic approach of the authorities,” said Abdulla. “Now I have decided to close down the plan.”

Nehr-e-Khayyam from 2000 to 2008. Photo: Google For his part, Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani confirmed that the provincial government has asked the NGO to stop working as in recent days every government officer is afraid of NAB inquiries, even if they do work in the larger interest of the people. He said, however, that they believed that the team of architects was thorough professionals. “We are on the project and will approve it through the Sindh Cabinet and then start working on it,” he said, adding that the chief minister has held several meetings.

Nehr-e-Khayyam from 2010 to 2013. Photo: Google Abdulla told Samaa Digital that for the last 20 years some well-known architects had wanted to make Nehr-e-Khayyam a waterway, as it was a gift of nature for Karachi. The channel was built during the Raj and was one of Clifton’s major lungs, as the late Ardeshir Cowasjee had described it. The architects had decided in 2016 to work on restoring it and KMC Mayor Waseem Akhtar had assured support. The plan was to make 20-foot wide and 8-foot long box drains beside the nehr to inject fresh water into the channel. They wanted to run boats on it, build seating areas and greenery around it. The team had also planned to clean up the sewage by setting up septic tanks and reed beds to purify the supply entering through the box drains.

Nehr-e-Khayyam from 2018 to 2019. Photo: Google The one-kilometer long channel was divided into 15 to 16 sections roughly 250 to 300 feet each, with each section designed by one architect. It would have cost Rs1 billion and the investment would have come from PANI and the architects’ companies. Since 2010 the nehr has been eyed as prime real estate. It is 150 feet wide, but encroachments have reduced it to 60 feet. Sewerage from Gizri and adjacent localities enter it. Plots were carved out of its banks illegally in connivance of the then officers of the Karachi/Sindh Building Control Authority and Karachi Development Authority. It got so bad that by 2018, the Supreme Court was ordering for a building constructed on its left bank to be torn down. Abdulla says that all their efforts have gone in vain because of delays from the Sindh government and Karachi Water & Sewerage Board even though they were not even putting any money into the project. He added that millions of rupees and the valuable time of professional architects have gone to waste as the Sindh government has signaled they have to stop the ongoing restoration work. PANI was set up by Jameel Yousuf, Amer Maqbool, Muhammad Rajpar, Maqsood Ismail, Akeel Bilgrami, Shahid Abdulla, Ali Akbar, Tariq Qaiser, Yawar Jilani, Mahboob Khan, Khadija-tul-Kubra, Moyena Niazi, Gibran Mir of Circuit, Yunas Sheikh, Rashid Usmani, Abid Bengali, Aref Cheval, Aziz Memon, Rukhsana Saleem and Khalid Mahmood. They had hoped to work on the 4,000mgd of raw, untreated sewage that is dumped into Karachi’s creeks, rivers and sea. Read the full article

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistans-war-on-polio-falters-amid-attacks-on-health-workers-and-mistrust/

Pakistan’s War on Polio Falters Amid Attacks on Health Workers and Mistrust

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani officials had been hopeful that 2019 would be the year they would succeed in their campaign against polio, and declare Pakistan polio free. But a complete victory has proved elusive.

Instead, the country’s anti-polio campaign has been hobbled by recent deadly attacks on health workers and resistance from parents in some parts of the country to having their children vaccinated against the disease. Amid those challenges, new polio cases continue to surface, with eight new ones reported this year.

The polio virus has also been found in sewage samples in several cities, including Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad, the capital, a worrisome sign to health officials.

Last week, a nationwide vaccine drive had to be temporarily suspended after two separate attacks that killed a female health worker and two police officers guarding a polio-eradication team.

In the vaccination drive that ended Saturday, Pakistan managed to vaccinate more than 37 million children, nearing its target of 39 million. But in the cities of Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta, the active search for unvaccinated children has been suspended given the security fears. There are now doubts about whether the next vaccination drive, scheduled to start in June, will start on time.

Babar Bin Atta, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s point person on polio eradication, acknowledged in an interview that the situation remains challenging. Apart from the eight new reported polio cases, environmental sampling shows that the virus is still being transmitted in 12 major cities and many remote regions of the country.

“This poses a serious threat to children all over the country,” Mr. Atta said.

Pakistan is one of only three countries, along with neighboring Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio still exists.

The local campaign to eradicate polio remains a source of deep-seated suspicions and fears. Hard-line Islamists believe the vaccination drive is part of a Western effort to sterilize Muslims. The fact that the C.I.A. used a vaccination team to track down Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in 2011 has helped fuel the resistance to vaccination campaigns in the country. Militants have frequently attacked health workers, accusing them of being spies, and the police have been deployed to provide security to anti-polio teams.

Poor immunization services, malnutrition, unsafe water and poor sanitation have allowed the virus to survive and paralyze vulnerable children with low immunity levels, officials say. And anti-vaccine propaganda on social media has compounded the problem.

“As a result, we continue missing children during immunization campaigns,” Mr. Atta said.

Successive governments have introduced awareness campaigns and repeatedly enlisted religious scholars to allay concerns of parents and counter anti-vaccination propaganda. Still, attacks on polio workers have continued.

On April 22, an angry mob set fire to a government health facility in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors spread that expired vaccination drops were being administered to children. Dozens of children complained of nausea and vomiting after getting the polio drops. Within hours, thousands of parents thronged local hospitals and demanded their children be examined.

As panic spread and an emergency was declared in local hospitals, officials clarified that the vaccine was neither expired nor dangerous.

Mr. Atta said he had lived in Peshawar for 18 years but had never witnessed such mass hysteria and panic.

A day after the burning of the health facility, a police officer providing security to health workers was killed, also in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Another police officer was killed the next day in a different part of province. At least 700,000 families refused polio vaccination in the province because of rumors and panic, the local news media reported.

And on Thursday, unidentified gunmen shot and killed a female health worker while another female worker was critically injured in an attack in southwestern Pakistan.

Even big cities, including Islamabad, have seen resistance to polio immunization campaigns.

“The biggest challenge in cities like Islamabad is the refusal by parents,” Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad, said in an interview. “Even if 1 percent of the children don’t get the polio drops, the polio sample remains alive in the environment, and we have to work harder in the next campaign.”

The government is focusing on addressing the misconceptions in communities and building trust and demand for polio vaccinations, officials said.

On Sunday, Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, the minister for religious affairs, sought the help of clerics and religious scholars in Peshawar, warning them about those spreading negative propaganda against polio vaccination.

“Religious scholars across the country agree that children need to be vaccinated against polio,” the minister was quoted as saying.

[newlahorerealestate]

Best Real Estate Lahore | Welcome to new lahore real estate ®

Are you looking for DHA Multan 10 Marla?

DHA Multan has been introduced by the most renowned and the leading housing societies in Pakistan. It has offered various residential and commercial plots to the residents of Multan. A modern and developed city enables the residents to live in a lavish, healthy, and safe environment. In this environment, the residents of DHA have access to all amenities of life and they can enjoy the state of the art living.

DHA is an outstanding housing society, which has launched its first project in Lahore. DHA Lahore has been very successful so it has launched projects in the other cities of Pakistan. For example, Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Bahawalpur, and Quetta. This housing society was first developed for the army and then it is for the public’s use as well.

Multan is an ancient city that has various historical places. This city is called as the metropolitan of south Punjab. Multan is the fifth biggest city in Pakistan. DHA Multan is located at Bosan road near Bahauddin Zakariya University. This housing society has two ends one is Bosan road and the other is Marital road so DHA Multan an entrance gate at both ends. It comprises of phase 1 right now, which has different sectors like A, B1, B2, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W1, W2, AND X. Therefore, if you want to have DHA Multan 10 Marla plot, you can have it in various sectors of DHA Multan phase 1. Real Estate Lahore

Do you want House for sale in DHA Lahore?

Are you looking house for sale in DHA Lahore? Great, you are in the right place. You can purchase the DHA phase 7 plot in 4.1 Crore. It has 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, 2 TV lounge, a drawing-room, a dining room, a powder room, and 2 storerooms. This house for sale in DHA Lahore has enough space to park 4 cars. Other features include a lush green lawn, tile marble flooring, sitting and Bar B Q area, sliding doors.

This DHA phase 7 house has CCTV cameras for the safety of your house. It is a double story house, bedroom, kitchen, dining, and drawing rooms have air conditioners. The owner has constructed a DHA phase 7 house, and it is approved by DHA.

Moreover, it has double glace windows for soundproofing, bathrooms have rain showers, excellent elevation, and a spacious terrace. This house for sale has a prime location, community center, hospital, and graveyard are just five minutes away. This house has all the necessities of life like electricity, water, sewage, gas, and electricity. If you want DHA phase 7 house for sale in 5 Marla, 10 Marla, 1 Kanal, and 2 Kanal, contact us.

Rent Room in Lahore

Moreover, if you want a home for rent in DHA, you can also have it. The rental prices for the homes are different. It depends on your budget, needs, requirement, and location. If you rent a house in DHA Lahore phase 6 then the price will be high as compared to DHA Phase 7. Furthermore, you can also rent a room in Lahore at affordable prices in any other area of Lahore. 

There are many friendly property websites so you can contact any if you want information regarding DHA. You can also visit at DHA Lahore official website to get any update regarding the prices of residential and commercial plots.

[tripstations]

Forget white bloggers from Poland. How much do Pakistanis know about domestic tourism? – Prism

We don’t need to teach foreigners about Pakistan half as urgently as we need to educate Pakistanis themselves.

There has been much talk about the future of Pakistani tourism. The Pakistan Tourism Summit was held in April, criticised by many as being too exclusive and biased towards Western media and influencers.

In response, there was a brilliant video by Alex of Lost with Purpose, in which she highlighted the three main problems when we portray a solely positive media coverage of travelling in the country. She talked about restrictions on free movement, lack of representation for Pakistani travellers and the potential for serious cultural clashes between unaware tourists and the people here.

The gora complex that Alex mentioned in her video is undoubtedly a real issue. There is no question that the perspectives of travellers who arrive on sponsored visits and rave about the jagged coastlines of Pakistan’s ‘most dangerous’ province are naïve and one-dimensional.

Yet, ultimately, these are all buzzwords — goray bloggers vs. local ones, the word ‘local’ conjuring the idea of a faceless young Pakistani who can somehow represent every nook of the country, from Ranikot to Rawalakot.

This debate is superfluous when you consider the foremost fact: Pakistan is woefully unprepared for any substantial increase in tourism, be it international or domestic.

Related: Pakistan is uniquely placed to take advantage of religious tourism. What is stopping us?

During extensive travel in Gilgit-Baltistan and northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year, I met dozens of people in the tourism industry who all painted a familiar narrative. Tourism was thriving up north before 9/11 and has been a ghost since. This year, however, almost everyone feels optimistic. They are seeing rising numbers of tourists, particularly domestic ones.

In Pakistan’s affluent heartlands, travel now competes with designer lawn and big weddings as a potent status symbol. The rise of social media, particularly Instagram, has made the well-angled shot of a cup of chai against snowy mountains as aspirational as candid wedding photographs lit up by fairy lights. Travel is so 2019.

There also seems to be general consensus in the north that the new government bodes better for the industry than its predecessor did. Imran Khan quickly did away with the frustrating requirement that every foreign traveller visiting GB or Azad Jammu & Kashmir carry a No Objection Certificate.

In Chitral, the government recently stopped requiring mandatory security escorts — good-natured policemen who would accompany the foreigner wherever she went, their guns jutting out against Chitral’s lush green hills as unseemly reminders of the fact that the country was, at the end of the day, a security state.

Restrictions on trekking around the Chitral mountains have been relaxed. For this year’s summer festival, the Kalash were expecting unprecedented numbers of visitors, both domestic and foreign. From Skardu to Bumburet, everyone told me that the tourists are coming.

But where will they stay? During peak season in Bumburet and Karimabad, Hunza’s tourist capital, all hotels get fully booked, with some tourists unable to find a space to set up tents for the night. According to Aneeqa Ali, who runs a Lahore-based tour company, The Mad Hatters, there is a dearth of hotel infrastructure in the north.

Luxury hotels such as the Serena are present in hub cities as well as in Shigar and Khaplu. The company has, in fact, reserved land for construction in smaller locations as well — in the future, there will likely be Serenas in the sleepy towns of Gulmit, Sost and Passu.

Yet, very few domestic tourists have the purchasing power for Serena nights. What they need are mid-range hotels that provide the necessities that all travellers except hardened backpackers expect — reliable electricity, hot water and clean sheets.

Without any centralised planning, enterprising residents of these areas have cobbled together ways to keep up with the increasing demand for housing. Everywhere along the famed Karakoram Highway, construction workers are busy trying to complete hotel buildings “before season starts”, using whatever material is available to finish the work. Some people open up their houses to guests, employing the concept of the homestay that has been popular in Southeast Asia for several years.

Read next: A journey to Bahawalpur and beyond, on the road of self discovery

Aneeqa, whose company places special emphasis on female travel, tells me that the problem with this decentralised growth is the absence of holistic planning at the local or regional levels. With hastily-constructed rest houses cropping up at every turn, there is no thematic development of areas to ensure that the new construction complements the natural landscape.

There also seems to be no requirement on rest houses to maintain a balance between residents and tourists in specific towns. “I can see Hunza becoming the next Nathiagali,” she tells me.

Ijlal Khattak of Baydaar Travels speaks of the same problem, giving the example of Naran as a paradise destroyed by overcrowding and unbridled construction. Ijlal’s company, highly popular on Instagram, specialises in tours of the Pakistani north, with an emphasis on eco-tourism. Both he and Aneeqa mention the lack of proper sewage and trash disposal facilities in major tourist hubs.

This is emblematic of the Saniplast approach the country treats its problems with — slaps one on and keeps going.

While searching for hotels in Skardu, I found only a few options on Google search and major travel sites such as Booking.com and Tripadvisor. Upon arriving in the city, however, I saw dozens of hotel options, none of which I had come across in my search.

It appears that even as the tourists of Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar use their smartphones to look up hotels, very few of the hospitality providers in the north are using technology to promote their businesses.

And how would they? Hunza hardly has electricity — a stunning fact considering how educated and progressive the region is. Skardu and Gilgit have fewer power issues, but none of Pakistan’s major networks provide internet service there. The military-owned SCOM has a monopoly on data services in the entire GB area.

While military-backed monopolies can come as a surprise only to the most naïve of us, this is frustrating on two levels. Firstly, for Pakistanis travelling in their own country, it is an infuriating hassle to have to switch services and procure a new SIM card upon entering GB. Secondly, and most importantly, even after getting a SCOM connection, one is not guaranteed connectivity. Service is paltry once you leave bigger towns and can sometimes disappear for days.

Explore: How music students in Gojal are trying to keep their culture alive

Yes, there are ways to travel without the internet. Yes, there is something romantic about walking into hotels and asking for availability, bringing to mind the neon “Vacant” signs of old-school American motels. Not being able to tell Facebook you are checking in at the Khunjerab Pass can be a blessing.

Yet, around the world, shifting travel patterns mean that more and more people opt to travel independently instead of with tour companies. If we want to enable tourists to explore the beauty of Pakistan beyond the biggest cities, is imperative that we have the technology to enable this. Independent travellers, those who want to use public transport and eat at restaurants beyond their hotel’s dining hall, need good internet.

This is symptomatic of one of the largest problems of the industry — an information gap between providers and clients that can sometimes seem insurmountable. We faced this gap in Bahawalpur, a city with an illustrious history of Sufi scholarship, Buddhist and Hindu influence and Nawab patronage. Due to its proximity to India and the presence of a huge cantonment area, the city is entirely out-of-bonds for foreigners.

However, this critical piece of information is not mentioned on the website of the Ministry of Interior, nor on any online hotel listings. We found out only at 10pm one night when my husband, a foreign national, tried to check in at a hotel after a full day of sightseeing. Within a few minutes, there were uniformed policemen standing in the lobby, telling us cheerfully but firmly that we had to spend the night at a police guesthouse and leave the next morning.

From Gilgit, I decided to take the Northern Areas Transport Corporation (Natco) bus across the regional border into Chitral. I asked five different people —hotel owners, wagon drivers, tour operators and Natco officials — whether the famed Shandur Pass was open. I received five different answers:

Yes, it was open. No, it was going to open after May 1st. It was open but one of the buses for the route had broken down, disrupting schedule.

I finally boarded a bus at the end of April, full of disbelief that there could be so much confusion about one of the major routes of the region, run by the government itself.

As the bus made its way into KPK, we began our descent from snowy mountaintops. It was after maghrib and I sat with a clenched jaw as the bus tumbled down a road so narrow the edge was invisible. Every now and then, a young Chitrali construction worker who was working for the Skardu-Gilgit road expansion project would jump off the bus and use an old shovel to dig into the mountain. Then, he would hop back in and the bus would continue down the newly-expanded road, the only major artery connecting northern KPK.

Also read: A road trip with my mother where women ‘cannot go alone’

If the government is serious about promoting tourism in these areas, it needs to improve the abysmal road infrastructure throughout the region. The people there will be the first beneficiaries — currently, it takes one six hours from Phander to travel 100 kilometres to visit family in KPK. The road between Skardu and Gilgit is a nightmare, although work is underway to make it wider. Roads in Chitral that service the three Kalash valleys are in terrible condition, making inter-valley movement lengthy and cumbersome.

The result is that most tourists never leave the most popular valley of Bumburet, which is fast becoming a menagerie of badly constructed hotels and souvenir shops.

Big city media continues to wring its hands over the appropriations of foreign bloggers, questioning their right to tell stories, insisting that the experiences of travel of Pakistanis are much more complex and “real”.

Yet, my travel through the north of Pakistan taught me that this attention, despite its good intentions, is ill-targeted. If there is any group of travellers that the northern tourism industry has a love-hate relationship with, it’s not random white travellers from Poland. It’s the non-local locals.

Tourists from Punjab, Karachi and the KPK heartland (Peshawar, Mardan and Mingora) form the largest proportion of visitors and revenues to these areas. The industry recognises that these are the people who kept coming even when the foreigners disappeared after 9/11.

Discover: How I travelled to 20 countries in four years on a Pakistani passport

These are the people who will always come — to spend a weekend away when Peshawar begins to swelter, on a group retreat from Karachi’s madness, for a class trip from Lums or King Edwards.

They will bring their families because they don’t think, as the average Western traveller does, that Pakistan is a backpacking destination, fit only for the young and untethered. A hotel owner in Phander laughed as he told me that his most prized guests were always Punjabis. “They eat well”, he understated.

The future of Pakistani tourism is Pakistanis. Certainly, it is nice to cultivate a friendlier image abroad and international tourism can bring much good to the country. Yet, hotel owners and restaurateurs up north know that with the country’s logistical difficulties and constantly precarious security situation, the one stable source of income they can rely on is not dollars or euros, but rupees from down south.

While recognising this group of tourists as their primary clientele, many in the hospitality industry also complain about their attitudes to travel.

There have been several incidents of male travellers harassing women in Hunza and Chitral. All northern festivals end with grounds covered in litter and food waste, mostly left by travel groups from the south.

All towns up north have been overtaken by the karahi effect — the omnipresence of Punjabi food on every menu. I remember being seated next to a well-heeled group of Karachiites at a restaurant in Karimabad. They were all staying at the Serena and had come to the restaurant to get a ‘local’ flavour.

After hearing the headwaiter meticulously explain each Hunza dish on the menu and exclaiming, “that sounds wonderful, na” in posh accents, they ordered eight karahis for the table. The waiter begged them to at least try chapshuro, a much-loved specialty. They agreed to get one for the table to share.

Check out: When water at Tarbela recedes, Bharukot Fort emerges to reveal an eventful history spanning centuries

We don’t need to teach foreigners about Pakistan half as urgently as we need to educate Pakistanis themselves. People travelling to the north should treat the trip as something more than a respite from the heat and a backdrop for Instagram shots. There are people living there, with complex histories, unique languages and a food culture that grew out of completely different necessities than the southern plains and plateaus.

Yes, the karahi doesn’t taste the way it does in Anarkali, but if you wanted karahi you should have never left Anarkali.

Despite the teetering economy, we will likely continue to see a boom in intra-country tourism over the next few years. Saba Akbar, an architect and prolific solo traveller behind The Local Trails, predicts the same, crediting the rise of social media to an upcoming exponential increase in tourism. “When that happens”, she says, “we need to be ready for it”.

It is important that both the government and tourists recognise that this boom in numbers itself is not a mark of success. Even in the best of circumstances, tourism inflicts damage on the environment and the hosting cultures. Unless we can channel this growth to directly benefit the people of these areas and protect their homes from irreversible harm, it will never be worth it.

Header photo: S.M.Bukhari

Do you have a critical take on tourism promotion? Share your views with us at prism@dawn.com

The post Forget white bloggers from Poland. How much do Pakistanis know about domestic tourism? – Prism appeared first on Tripstations.

from Tripstations http://bit.ly/2WyM3hL via IFTTT

[atifparvaiz000]

WATCH: Alamgir Khan, team, throw sewage water at Sindh CM House

WATCH: Alamgir Khan, team, throw sewage water at Sindh CM House

KARACHI: Alamgir Khan, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA from Karachi of #FixIt fame, on Monday held a unique protest demonstration against the non-resolution of Karachi’s civic problems, ARY News reported.

Khan, accompanied by a team of his organisation’s volunteers, collected sewerage water in buckets and the team then gathered outside the Chief Minister’s House.

After chanting slogans…

[cleopatrarps]

Pakistan Has Just One New Polio Case, but Isn’t Declaring Victory Yet

DUKKI, Pakistan — Outside her small, mud-walled house in western Pakistan, Gul Saima is cajoling her 3-year-old son to take a few steps. He cries as he struggles to lift his right leg and arm, both stiff and unyielding.

Overhead is a banner featuring a photo of a smiling boy on crutches. Ms. Saima, 38, is illiterate and cannot read the words printed in Urdu: “Don’t let your child’s dreams go to waste.” But the connection between the smiling boy and her son, Sayyad Karam, is painfully clear: Both have the paralysis that often follows a polio infection.

The health authorities hung the banners throughout the area for a polio awareness campaign — and apparently put one on Ms. Saima’s house in a clumsy attempt to show officials, many of whom have visited since Sayyad was diagnosed with polio last month — that they are committed to it.

Sayyad’s diagnosis was a significant event, and not only for his family. So far, his is the only new polio case of the year in Pakistan — a historic low, according to official figures in a country where eradication efforts have been repeatedly foiled by ignorance, mistrust and militant attacks on vaccination teams.

Pakistan has come agonizingly close to declaring victory over polio. Each of the last three years, nongovernmental organizations involved in fighting it have optimistically declared it the virus’s final year, seeking support from international donors and local officials as they embark on the daunting task of vaccinating every child 5 and under in the country.

But polio has persisted here and in neighboring Afghanistan, where increasing instability has left both countries at risk, the finish line just beyond reach.

Sayyad’s diagnosis prompted an emergency vaccination campaign in Dukki, the small coal-mining town in Pakistan’s western province of Baluchistan where the family lives.

About 35 miles from Ms. Saima’s home, Saif ur-Rehman, the commissioner of Loralai, the district that includes Dukki, is checking in with some of the vaccination teams after the emergency campaign’s first day. The teams report their results to Mr. Rehman, and he responds with strident calls for greater efforts.

“This is a scar on our community,” he tells them, adding that if polio were to appear “anywhere else in the world, I don’t care. But this is our town, our community. It’s here and it’s here now.”

He makes a pointed comparison with India, Pakistan’s neighbor and main rival, which eradicated polio in 2014. The meeting goes well into the evening, even though almost everyone has been up since dawn, preparing and deploying the vaccination teams that go door to door under police escort.

After the meeting, Mr. Rehman explains his urgency. “We don’t hide anything,” he says. “The worst thing you can do in this scenario is try to paint a rosy picture.”

He is all too aware of the vulnerability of Baluchistan, Pakistan’s biggest province: It consistently ranks last in the country on progress markers like literacy, infant mortality and terrorism. Of the eight new polio cases in Pakistan last year, three were in Baluchistan.

“We know the issues we’re facing,” Mr. Rehman says. “It just presents an opportunity for us to get stronger.”

His positivity reflects a new optimism about the polio eradication campaign after years of painful setbacks. In 2014, 306 new cases were reported, the most in 15 years and more than three times as many as the year before.

And since 2012, militants have killed more than 70 anti-polio workers and police officers protecting them, attacks that began after the Pakistani Taliban accused vaccinators of being foreign spies. The situation worsened after the United States was found to have recruited a Pakistani doctor to help find Osama bin Laden under the guise of carrying out a vaccination campaign.

“Back then, everyone felt like their efforts were in vain,” says Dr. Rana Safdar, the national coordinator of the Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “If things kept going the same way, we knew we were going to get the same results.”

Since 2015, Dr. Safdar has overseen virtually every aspect of Pakistan’s battle against polio. In his office in Islamabad, the capital, he sits among a war room’s assortment of maps and weekly reports from across the country. Local bureaucracies, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Unicef — all report to and coordinate with Dr. Safdar’s office under a federal program similar to India’s.

“People needed to have some trust in the federal government to reach a solution,” he says.

But given the rampant corruption and sometimes deadly political rivalries within that government, trust is hard to come by. And many of the impoverished families that vaccinators seek out have never met a representative of the state.

Their suspicion is compounded by rumors that the polio vaccine causes impotence, death and, ironically, paralysis. Refusals are common, and some families will hide their children from vaccinators, or even attack them.

“They’ve chased us with sticks before, even,” says Saida Baloch, a cheerful 27-year-old leading an emergency vaccination team on its rounds in Dukki.

Ms. Baloch, who has worked as a vaccinator in Dukki since 2014, is well aware of the risks she and her team face. Attacks have been rare the past two years, but in January a mother-daughter vaccination team was shot and killed in Quetta, about 100 miles west of Dukki.

Despite the deaths, much of Pakistan’s recent success in battling polio can be attributed to the country’s improving security. Michel Zaffran, the director of polio eradication for the World Health Organization, says a bigger threat lies across the border in hard-to-reach places in Afghanistan.

“As long as we have the virus on either side of the border, we have a risk,” he says. “It’s a sneaky virus. It continues to hide in pockets where the vaccine isn’t reaching it.”

Of Afghanistan’s 13 cases last year, six were in Kandahar Province, just across the border with Baluchistan. (Nigeria, the only other country where the virus remains endemic, has not seen a new case in two years.)

Pakistan now has 55 monitoring sites where teams test water and sewage streams for polio, more than in any other country battling the virus. Until the samples are completely negative, it means the virus continues to circulate even if it has not paralyzed anyone. Currently, only two cities are testing positive for environmental polio: Peshawar in the north and Karachi in the south, which both serve as transit hubs.

The health authorities say the virus is now “ping-ponging” in Baluchistan. The strain found in Dukki came from another city just north of it, and that strain in turn was traced back to Karachi, where the virus has been present for over a decade. As long as carriers keep circulating the virus, children who go unvaccinated or miss a dose are at risk of contracting polio.

That is part of the reason that the final years of eradication efforts can prove the hardest, says Mr. Zaffran of the World Health Organization.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he says. “It’s not that we’re close, it’s that we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”

The post Pakistan Has Just One New Polio Case, but Isn’t Declaring Victory Yet appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2IC9i0q via News of World

[ayazmemonmotiwala-blog]

World News Viral Karachi Businessman Unique Protest Cleaning Sewage Drain Karachi Unique Protest World Record Election Office at Sewage Drain

[dani-qrt]

Pakistan Has Just One New Polio Case, but Isn’t Declaring Victory Yet

DUKKI, Pakistan — Outside her small, mud-walled house in western Pakistan, Gul Saima is cajoling her 3-year-old son to take a few steps. He cries as he struggles to lift his right leg and arm, both stiff and unyielding.

Overhead is a banner featuring a photo of a smiling boy on crutches. Ms. Saima, 38, is illiterate and cannot read the words printed in Urdu: “Don’t let your child’s dreams go to waste.” But the connection between the smiling boy and her son, Sayyad Karam, is painfully clear: Both have the paralysis that often follows a polio infection.

The health authorities hung the banners throughout the area for a polio awareness campaign — and apparently put one on Ms. Saima’s house in a clumsy attempt to show officials, many of whom have visited since Sayyad was diagnosed with polio last month — that they are committed to it.

Sayyad’s diagnosis was a significant event, and not only for his family. So far, his is the only new polio case of the year in Pakistan — a historic low, according to official figures in a country where eradication efforts have been repeatedly foiled by ignorance, mistrust and militant attacks on vaccination teams.

Pakistan has come agonizingly close to declaring victory over polio. Each of the last three years, nongovernmental organizations involved in fighting it have optimistically declared it the virus’s final year, seeking support from international donors and local officials as they embark on the daunting task of vaccinating every child 5 and under in the country.

But polio has persisted here and in neighboring Afghanistan, where increasing instability has left both countries at risk, the finish line just beyond reach.

Sayyad’s diagnosis prompted an emergency vaccination campaign in Dukki, the small coal-mining town in Pakistan’s western province of Baluchistan where the family lives.

About 35 miles from Ms. Saima’s home, Saif ur-Rehman, the commissioner of Loralai, the district that includes Dukki, is checking in with some of the vaccination teams after the emergency campaign’s first day. The teams report their results to Mr. Rehman, and he responds with strident calls for greater efforts.

“This is a scar on our community,” he tells them, adding that if polio were to appear “anywhere else in the world, I don’t care. But this is our town, our community. It’s here and it’s here now.”

He makes a pointed comparison with India, Pakistan’s neighbor and main rival, which eradicated polio in 2014. The meeting goes well into the evening, even though almost everyone has been up since dawn, preparing and deploying the vaccination teams that go door to door under police escort.

After the meeting, Mr. Rehman explains his urgency. “We don’t hide anything,” he says. “The worst thing you can do in this scenario is try to paint a rosy picture.”

He is all too aware of the vulnerability of Baluchistan, Pakistan’s biggest province: It consistently ranks last in the country on progress markers like literacy, infant mortality and terrorism. Of the eight new polio cases in Pakistan last year, three were in Baluchistan.

“We know the issues we’re facing,” Mr. Rehman says. “It just presents an opportunity for us to get stronger.”

His positivity reflects a new optimism about the polio eradication campaign after years of painful setbacks. In 2014, 306 new cases were reported, the most in 15 years and more than three times as many as the year before.

And since 2012, militants have killed more than 70 anti-polio workers and police officers protecting them, attacks that began after the Pakistani Taliban accused vaccinators of being foreign spies. The situation worsened after the United States was found to have recruited a Pakistani doctor to help find Osama bin Laden under the guise of carrying out a vaccination campaign.

“Back then, everyone felt like their efforts were in vain,” says Dr. Rana Safdar, the national coordinator of the Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “If things kept going the same way, we knew we were going to get the same results.”

Since 2015, Dr. Safdar has overseen virtually every aspect of Pakistan’s battle against polio. In his office in Islamabad, the capital, he sits among a war room’s assortment of maps and weekly reports from across the country. Local bureaucracies, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Unicef — all report to and coordinate with Dr. Safdar’s office under a federal program similar to India’s.

“People needed to have some trust in the federal government to reach a solution,” he says.

But given the rampant corruption and sometimes deadly political rivalries within that government, trust is hard to come by. And many of the impoverished families that vaccinators seek out have never met a representative of the state.

Their suspicion is compounded by rumors that the polio vaccine causes impotence, death and, ironically, paralysis. Refusals are common, and some families will hide their children from vaccinators, or even attack them.

“They’ve chased us with sticks before, even,” says Saida Baloch, a cheerful 27-year-old leading an emergency vaccination team on its rounds in Dukki.

Ms. Baloch, who has worked as a vaccinator in Dukki since 2014, is well aware of the risks she and her team face. Attacks have been rare the past two years, but in January a mother-daughter vaccination team was shot and killed in Quetta, about 100 miles west of Dukki.

Despite the deaths, much of Pakistan’s recent success in battling polio can be attributed to the country’s improving security. Michel Zaffran, the director of polio eradication for the World Health Organization, says a bigger threat lies across the border in hard-to-reach places in Afghanistan.

“As long as we have the virus on either side of the border, we have a risk,” he says. “It’s a sneaky virus. It continues to hide in pockets where the vaccine isn’t reaching it.”

Of Afghanistan’s 13 cases last year, six were in Kandahar Province, just across the border with Baluchistan. (Nigeria, the only other country where the virus remains endemic, has not seen a new case in two years.)

Pakistan now has 55 monitoring sites where teams test water and sewage streams for polio, more than in any other country battling the virus. Until the samples are completely negative, it means the virus continues to circulate even if it has not paralyzed anyone. Currently, only two cities are testing positive for environmental polio: Peshawar in the north and Karachi in the south, which both serve as transit hubs.

The health authorities say the virus is now “ping-ponging” in Baluchistan. The strain found in Dukki came from another city just north of it, and that strain in turn was traced back to Karachi, where the virus has been present for over a decade. As long as carriers keep circulating the virus, children who go unvaccinated or miss a dose are at risk of contracting polio.

That is part of the reason that the final years of eradication efforts can prove the hardest, says Mr. Zaffran of the World Health Organization.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he says. “It’s not that we’re close, it’s that we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”

The post Pakistan Has Just One New Polio Case, but Isn’t Declaring Victory Yet appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2IC9i0q via Online News