The second floor of progressive centre, located on main Shahrah-e-Faisal is ablaze, according to the eye witness Yehyah the fire broke out some 30 minutes back, there are several ambulances waiting on standby. The fire brigade had arrived but it was without water, so it went away probably to fetch some.

Several explosions heard from the building, The main road is smokey and completely jammed. Please avoid Shahrah-e- Faisal.
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Saw this one near Allah-Wala chorangi. Don’t exactly know what it meant. Any one, any idea?


Here is another pic from near point.
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Since a few days I have been hearing about the recent deployment of CCTV cameras throughout the city by the city mayor Mustafa Kamal. The deployment of CCTV cameras at select traffic corridors of Karachi (and soon throughout the city) is to serve multiple purposes ranging from traffic monitoring to policing the area while it may also help catch any corrupt officials who may want siphon off innocent citizens. The whole project took only 6 months to complete and hopefully if used consistently will definitely help improve the security situation in Karachi.

The system is also said to have face recognition software, RFID software, and is connected to the NADRA database. What caught my attention was this booth recently (?) erected in front of Metropole boating a banner afixed to the top, which on afterthought might not be linked together, it generally read “Future Eye Inc. You are being watched CCTV & Network …..” I honestly have no idea what this booth has to do with CCTV deployment (?), is it to create awareness or does this booth have another purpose.

CNN:Airspan Networks a leading provider of WiMAX broadband wireless access networks, announced that City District Government Karachi (CDGK) in Pakistan has successfully deployed Airspan’s 4.9 GHz WiMAX solutions for its IP Closed Circuit Television Video surveillance project in Karachi. CDGK is committed to video surveillance of all major city roads. Airspan is partnering with GCS a U.S. based telecommunications integrator that provides wireless video solutions in Pakistan

DHA is working round the clock to complete what appears to be a fairly ambitious (and rather ambiguous) program of making a network of drains that will carry rain water from defence into the sea. Well, good enough.

But, the drains appear to be square in shape and therefore, will allow maximum of silt to collect. That will cause lot of space to be filled up pretty fast. And that’s bad news for the people of defence, Karachi.

Secondly, some of the drains appear to be above road level. Well, how will water go down the drain when they are up and above the roads from which they are supposed to carry water?

Thirdly, it is not very clear how DHA plans to cope with the situation when rains finally decide to pour down during this week. Drains are at best incomplete though DHA management looks happy go lucky.

DHA has avoided such technical questions on the ground that they are working very hard and that people must stop talking and help them instead.

God help us all!

KMB made a post almost a month back about the recently released Google mapping system for general utilization in Pakistan, since then I have been addicted to this tool and have seen the Karachi area being extensively mapped.

I share a screencapture of the mapping done in the regions of Shahrah-e-Faisal and one is definitely impressed at how much work a collaborative team can pull together in a short span of 30 days, this areas was barren a month back and is now peppered with accurate roads maps across the city and it continues to grow

We definitely need YOUR input as well, take a look at an area you know well and contribute in some way by adding one or two (or more) points of interests [road, name of mosque, school, shop or anything]. In all honestly it just takes a little getting used to but once you are in swing then its quite addicting. Do keep in mind that these images are a few years old (3-4) [taken before the development of Shahrah-e-Qaideen flyover] but even then, most of the city can be accurately mapped.

Join the Karachi Mapping effort here on Google Map Maker

Karachi sports an empty, but clean look, as all transporters are on strike protesting against the fuel hike and demanding an increase in fare prices. The transporters are negotiating for a Rs. 2 increase in their fare structure….. which will in turn most definitely impact the poor. One then has to wonder how long can a minimum wage person can survive this economic crunch, is there truly an economic plan somewhere beyond this chaos or are we simple destined to ride this never ending curve? The only good thing I see from this strike today is less chaos and I suspect less pollution.

It has been some time that I posted here so as soon as I saw this, I decided to post ASAP, meaning this happened one and a half hours ago. Just a bit after PAF chapter at the Baloch Colony road opposite Defense View, a Honda Civic rolled up the slope and then over.

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Only a pure Karachi motorcyclist can pull this stunt off Two degh’s balanced perfectly on a motorcycle cruising down Shahrah-e-Faisal