By Roy Zia Ur Rahman
ISLAMABAD, Aug 03 (APP): In many towns across Punjab, homes built with love, savings, and decades of hard work are slowly sinking below the streets. These houses — filled with childhood memories, parents’ sacrifices, and the dreams of entire families — once stood above the road. Now, with each new round of road repair, they are left deeper in the ground. Rainwater and sewage enter through their gates, and families can do little to stop it.
This isn’t just a story of water and walls — it’s a story of loss. Because of repeated mistakes in how roads are rebuilt, families are losing more than homes: they are losing billions of rupees, their safety, and the precious memories they hoped to pass on.
Aziz-ur-Rehman from Faisalabad stares at the house of his childhood with sorrow.
“This house is divided among my siblings, and I love it deeply,” he says. “But I cannot afford to rebuild it. It used to stand higher than the street. Now, after every round of road reconstruction, it feels like it has sunk deeper into the ground.”
The rainwater, he explains, pours in every season. The gate has been raised several times. Even the courtyard has been elevated. “But still,” he sighs, “the rooms feel like basements now.”
In Rawalpindi’s Raja Shafiq-ur-Rehman Town, Siddique was forced to sell his late father’s six-marla, three-storey house — a monument of family pride.
“It had sunk below the road. Sewer water would overflow into the house. We had no choice but to sell it for a fraction of its worth and move into a smaller, elevated house.”
Talha, also from Faisalabad, said he constructed his new home with a steep ramp requiring four to five steps just to reach the door.
“Every time the lane is reconstructed, it gets higher. If we don’t build high now, the house will be underwater in a few years,” he explains grimly.
Umar, another resident, points to the failure of municipal oversight.
“No department checks if streets are rebuilt at the same level. Contractors just pour fresh material over damaged lanes. This raises the road with each reconstruction while the homes remain at their original levels — until they are far below the street.”
Sakhi Muhammad adds another dimension.
“Homeowners are forced to raise their entrances and build ramps, which in turn narrows the street for pedestrians and vehicles. It’s a chain reaction. Every five years, billion-rupee homes become unlivable just because the street keeps climbing above them.”
Chaudhry Zafar from Jhang Road calls it a province-wide crisis.
“If you build your home at street level, it’ll drown. If you build it high, it ruins the street. Either way, the homeowner suffers. Our parents worked night shifts and sacrificed everything for these homes — only to see them destroyed by rainwater and sewage.”
Advocate Usman, a resident of Jhang and a legal expert, explains: “Legally, roads and lanes must be reconstructed at the original grade level, with proper consideration of drainage flow and connection to the main road.”
He references Rule 15 and Rule 17 of the Punjab Local Government (Works) Rules 2017, which require that existing surfaces be properly scarified (removed) before reconstruction, ensuring alignment with the original design and proper water flow.
“But what actually happens?” he says. “Contractors, often in collusion with officials, skip this process to save money. They just add a new layer on top. Over time, this buries homes. Poor families can’t afford to rebuild, and their lives sink — just like their homes.”
Usman, despite being a lawyer, lives in a rented house.
“I refuse to build a home that will be beneath the road in five years. I’ll just buy a raised one later,” he says with painful practicality.
This isn’t just poor planning — it’s systemic failure, repeated across cities. And while contractors make their profits and officials look the other way, the people pay the price. Childhood memories drown in sewage. Mothers’ courtyards become swamps. And the dreams of working-class families — who built their homes brick by brick — are quietly buried under the very streets that were supposed to serve them.
Citizens across Pakistan are demanding strict enforcement of road-level regulations, proper drainage planning, and reconstruction accountability. If no such policy is enforced, a generation of homes — and the lives lived within them — will continue to decay silently beneath the roads of a rising, indifferent city.
