KARACHI, July 30: Acute water shortage continues to persist in various parts of the city owing to short supply of water from the Dhabeji pumping station and the Hub dam source.

Water supply to different parts of the former district central will also be badly affected on Wednesday following the closure of the pumping of water closure of the North-East Karachi pumping station for 12 hours.

The KWSB officials said that the pumping of water from the NEK pumping station had been stopped for 12 hours for repairing a 66-inch dia pipeline which had started leaking near Maiymar Complex. The localities which would suffer owing to the closure of the pumping station include North Karachi, Surjani Town, New Karachi, Buffer Zone and parts of Federal B’ Area.

According to the KWSB officials, the city on Monday received a short supply of 14 million gallons from Dhabeji and 25 mgd from the Hub source. Elaborating, the sources said that the city as per an agreement with Wapda was supposed to get 38 mgd of water from the Hub source, but owing to the sharp decline of the water level in the Hub dam reservoir, the city on Tuesday received only 13.5 mgd, thereby causing water distribution problems for the sprawling townships of Orangi, Baldia, North Karachi and Surjani.

“In fact, the water supply to the city from the Hub source had been ranging between 12.5 and 15 mgd for the last one week,” the officials said, adding that measures were being taken to help resolve the persisting water problem of the localities hooked to the Hub dam source on priority.

Asked what alternative arrangements had been made for the supply of water to Surjani Town which had already been de-linked from the Hub sources following short supply of water from the Hub reservoir, they said that the locality was currently being supplied from the North-East Karachi pumping station on experimental basis.

When told that complaints of acute water shortage from Surjani Town continued to pour in newspaper offices, the officials expressed the hope that water supply position of the locality would considerably improve in a couple of days once its supply from the NEK pumping station was regularised.

Complaints of persisting water shortage have also been received from Kharadar’s police kiosk area, Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s Block 4-A (Journalists Society), Bhadurabad’s Block 3, Jinnah Society, Bangalore Town, Adamjee Nagar and Al-Hamra Society. Muddy water continued to be supplied in various parts of the city, exposing the residents of the affected localities to serious health hazards.