KARACHI, Sept 30: Water supply to the city from the Hub dam source will come to a halt by mid-October, as the level of water in the dam’s reservoir has reached 278RL (reservoir level) against its dead storage level of 276RL.

With a view to discuss the contingency plan for the sprawling townships of Orangi, Baldia, North Karachi, Surjani and Site (part), a high-level meeting, with City Nazim Naimatullah Khan in the chair, on Monday decided that the present level of 53 million gallons of water per day be maintained for all the townships that are hooked to the Hub source even after stoppage of water supply from the dam by diverting additional quantity of water from the Indus source.

Though the water level in the dam’s reservoir had reached 280.50RL in the last week of Aug, following its catchment area received rains, it kept on decreasing as the city had been getting 0.1mgd of water since then and now the level has touched the alarming level of only 278RL.

The meeting, which was attended, among others, by KWSB managing-director Brig Sardar Javaid Ashraf (retired), DCO Shafiqur Rehman Paracha, KWSB deputy managing-director (technical services) Suleman Chandio, and Nazimeen of different towns, decided that in addition to 43mgd of water currently being supplied to the areas hooked to the Hub source from the North- East Karachi (old) pumping station, an additional 10mgd of water would be diverted to these localities from the Indus source via the Ajmair Nagri pumping station to overcome the crisis in the water-deficit pockets of the townships.

The meeting was informed that work on the rehabilitation of over 300 community tanks was under way, which would be completed in four weeks, and the number of tankers would be raised from the current 1,700 trips to about 3,400 to meet the water requirements of the tail-end areas of all those localities hooked to the Hub source.

These tanks, which were named ‘Awami’ tanks, were constructed under the KWSB’s water management crisis programme when Hub dam had gone dry in 1999-2000. But, as almost all of them have become redundant due to their poor maintenance, a huge amount would be required to rehabilitate them.

The meeting was further informed that distribution and monitoring of water supply situation in the areas hooked to Hub dam would be the responsibility of Nazimeen of the localities concerned who have also been authorized to make instalments of water bills of the consumers.

At the outset, the meeting was told that although a high- level committee for Hub water supply had recently decided that both Karachi and Lasbella canals would be supplied 45 million- gallons of water from the Hub source for three and two days, respectively, Wapda officials manning the regulator of the dam’s reservoir were at present releasing only 10mgd of water in the Hub canal on each day of its three-day turn and because of that the KWSB officials were unable to ensure equitable distribution of water among the areas hooked to the dam.

Water supply to the city from the Hub source was earlier stopped in Dec, 1999, because its catchment area had remained dry during the successive four consecutive monsoon seasons.

However, water supply to the city from the source was restored in the third week of Aug, 2001, after its catchment area received monsoon rains in the year 2000.

The Nazimeen of Site, Baldia and Gulshan-i-Iqbal Towns, Amir Nawab, Aurangzeb and Abdul Wahab, respectively, also attended the meeting.