The people of Karachi are going mad

[LRE]

The people of Karachi are going mad



Thursday, August 07, 2008
By Shahid Shah

Karachi

Abid Hussain, 33, works in a manufacturing factory at the tower. He has to come to office daily from Gulshan-e-Hadeed, a distance of more than 30 kilometers. Public transport takes him around four hours daily to commute between his home and the office. Sometimes, when he is lucky enough it saves him half an hour, but such chances come once in a blue moon.

Most of the times, he is late in the office and gets his pay cut by some percentage. “I have made some ‘setting now’” he says with a smile. But, he usually remains under pressure at work. In order to cover his work and please his bosses, he works till late hours. Again, reaching at home takes him a long time and he is unable to give enough time to his family.

He does not sleep well either, as electricity keeps coming and going. Lack of rest, more work at the office and long distance commutation have resulted in his becoming angry and frustrated. Of late, this has translated into domestic quarrels. “Life is not same as it was at the time of marriage six years back. Whenever I am late my wife blames me of having affairs with other women,” Hussain says bitterly.

His elder daughter, aged 5, goes to school, but due to tensions and inflation he has been unable to pay her school fees for two months during the summer vacation. In Karachi, most schools charge fees for vacation periods as well. “I’ll have to pay three months fees now,” he says with a touch of disappointment. His younger son has still to go school. Sometimes, Hussain says he feels like quitting work and settle things at home but there was no alternate. He has decided to continue with his punishing routine and instead finds relief in drugs.

Hussain’s case is not unusual. In a city of several million, there are several thousand in Karachi who have also opted for drugs in one form of another to tackle their stressful lives for which they see no solution.

Analysts say that there are several factors which are affecting social as well individual performance of the people of Karachi but three of them power breakdowns, water shortages and commutation problems. “These are aiding fuel to the fire of stress,” comments Dr Haroon Ahmed, President Pakistan Association for Mental Health, a leading name in the city’s medical community.

Doctors say that these problems do not make people physically sick by showing fever or flu, but develop a great pressure on them mentally. “Sometimes you get as expression, as when people burn buses,” says Dr Haroon. But many people do not relate these reactions to their stressful activities.

During the mid-90s, Karachiites were facing problems of insecurity and many of them had to leave the city to move to the safer places. But nowadays, these three civic problems are affecting most of the population. Besides affecting relationships at home, these social evils are also having impact over individual performance at office. In the long term, it puts a negative impact over the collective economy. Sometimes, this stress ends up in physical breakdown too and the people commit suicide, said another psychiatrist.

To add to the commuting problem, fare prices have increased in the past couple of weeks. The average salary of the people using public transport remains around Rs6,000/month both at public sector as well as private offices. One person, who spent around Rs800 per month on commuting three months back will now have to spend Rs1,200 and above.

Dr Haroon Ahmed said he was getting more patients now after increase in the level of inflation. Some patients, who had recovered were also returning to his clinic. Problems are increasing and people are burning vehicles and committing suicide, but “It is the tip of the iceberg that you see,” he said.

Medicines do not solve civic problems, he said, adding when the stress levels increase, they turn into depression and anxiety. Some social problems are also created like minor to big crimes and drug using. The fact that many anti-depressants are available without a prescription in the city’s pharmacies, also add to the problem.

More than 60 varieties from the Benzodiazepine family are available at prices from Re0.80 to Rs500. Panadol, Paracetamol, Ativan, Laxotin are commonly bought and consumed.

Noman Mohammad, a sociologist and professor of the NED University said these social problems had broken the level of tolerance. Talking specifically on Karachi issues, he said that the elite of the city had disowned it as compared to other big cities of the county, especially Lahore. Even, sociologists were not working and there was no collective response to the social evils either. “People have got defeatist mentality,” he commented.

Noman Mohammad said almost all hospitals of the city were having more patients of blood pressure, heart diseases and diabetes, mostly related to the stress. “Social breakdown erupts suddenly,” he commented, adding “You saw one such indication at the time of the murder of Benazir Bhutto.”

Abid Hussain, who is one of hundreds of thousands Karachiites, said he has tried many of these medicines but no one has a permanent solution. But, who will resolve the social problems, as Dr Haroon Ahmed said, “We have a society which is not accountable to anybody.”

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=128666