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KARACHI, May 12: Power breakdowns kept on occurring at almost half of local pumping stations on Saturday.
At a time when the city had already suffered a shortfall of around 14 million gallons of water on Saturday due to repeated power failures at the KWSB’s three major pumping stations, situated at North-East Karachi, Dhabeji and Dumlottee, disruption of power supply for long durations at most of the city’s local pumping stations badly affected the water supply schedule of various localities.
According to the KWSB sources, power supply kept on playing hide and seek at almost half of the city’s total 132 local pumping stations on Friday and Saturday, making it impossible for valvemen and other concerned officials to ensure uninterrupted supply of their concerned localities.
The worst impact of the frequent power failures at local pumping stations was felt in those localities which are supplied water either after every 72 hours or after every two days. The KWSB officials said that such localities would now remain dry till their next turn .
“Although we have supplied the lists of all major water installations and local pumping stations to the KESC with a request to ensure uninterrupted power supply and also exempt them from any sort of loadshedding, most of our local as well as major pumping stations are nowadays experiencing frequent power breakdowns,” said a senior official of the KWSB.
CONTAMINATION: Continuous supply of contaminated water in over 100 houses of North Karachi’s Sector 5-C/2 (Bilal Colony) has posed a serious health hazard for the residents of the affected locality.
Residents of the affected locality complained that although they were being supplied stinking water for the last two days, none of the KWSB’s concerned official had, so far, bothered to even visit their locality to ascertain the cause of the fault responsible for contaminated water.
“A number of people, particularly elderly persons and children, have already become victim of hepatitis-A, gastroenteritis and Typhoid after consuming the filthy water,” a resident of the locality claimed.
Suspecting that some sewage water might have entered their pipeline, the residents of the affected locality demanded of city Nazim Naimatullah Khan and the KWSB managing director to direct the concerned officials to remove the fault of contaminated water without any further delay or more people would fall victim to serious abdomen diseases.
Sewage water: Filthy water gushing out from different choked gutters has spread over a couple of streets of PECHS Block 2, near Tariq Road’s commercial centre.
Residents of the affected streets and those having shops in the rear markets of Tariq Road’s commercial centre said although most of the gutters of the locality often remained choked and overflowing, the concerned officials of the KWSB had, so far, failed to rectify the recurring problem on a permanent basis, despite a number of complaints lodged with them on several occasions.
They said that since filthy water coming out from some choked gutters often remained stranded on both sides of their streets as well as in front of their main entrances, their children and guests had no choice but to step into the filthy water while entering or going out of houses.
Urging the KWSB managing director to help resolve the recurring sewage problem, they said that sewage water was not only posing serious health hazards, but was also creating stinking atmosphere in the locality.
