Hyderabad road carries electricity poles down its middle

Electricity poles stand in the middle of a newly carpeted road in Hyderabad, forcing vehicles to swerve around them, after footage of the stretch between Alamdar Chowk and the Old National Highway spread widely on social media this week.

The road links Qasimabad with Hyderabad city. Video of the stretch showed traffic threading between poles planted in the asphalt, and drew hundreds of critical and sarcastic comments, with users comparing the zigzag driving to a video game and describing the scene as an engineering feat in reverse.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Sindh president Haleem Adil Sheikh shared the footage on X and criticised the provincial government, calling the road an example of its development projects and questioning how the work was planned. Both ProPakistani and ARY News reported his post.

After the criticism, a spokesperson for Hyderabad Mayor Kashif Ali Shoro said the road is not finished and that work to relocate the poles is under way. According to the spokesperson, the project involves shifting 162 electricity poles, and 10 of the 27 feeders connected to it have already been moved, with work on the rest continuing.

The mayor's office urged citizens not to use the road until construction is complete and it is formally opened to traffic. ProPakistani reported that the road is expected to be finished and opened to the public by the end of November.

The two outlets differed slightly in how they described the road itself: ProPakistani called it newly constructed and newly carpeted, while ARY News described it as under construction. Both carried the same figures from the mayor's spokesperson for the poles and feeders.

Residents said the poles had been in place before the paving work and were not moved before the road was laid. The complaints centred less on the poles themselves than on the sequencing of the project, with users asking why the road and the electricity infrastructure were not coordinated.

Hyderabad's municipal authorities have not issued a written statement beyond the spokesperson's remarks. It is not clear from the reports when the relocation of the remaining 152 poles will begin or how traffic will be managed on the road until the work is finished.