KARACHI: Residents hold demos against water shortage: No supply to major hospitals today
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Oct 21: Residents of water-starved localities of former district West blocked on Monday roads and staged sit-in at three places to protest against the persisting water shortage.
The demonstrations were held at Banaras Chowk, Islam Chowk and Nishan-i- Haider Chowk in Orangi. The demonstration at Banaras Chowk was the biggest and it caused traffic jam for about two and a half hours as some of the protesters pelted vehicles with stones.
Witnesses told Dawn that the traffic proceeding to and from Orangi via Banaras Chowk remained disrupted between 9:30am and 12 due to the presence of a large number of people at and all around Banaras Chowk.
Large numbers of policemen from police stations, including SITE, Pirabad and Pak Colony, were rushed to the scene to maintain order.
Protesters held banners in their hands which carried slogans such as Pani do ya nahin to kursi chhor do. They shouted slogans against officials of the KWSB and the city government for about two and a half hours.
The protesters dispersed peacefully around 12. No untoward incident was reported.
Demonstrations were organized at Orangi’s Nishan-i-Haider and Islam Chowk to protest against the non-availability of water in various sectors of Orangi for the past nine days.
The protesters, who included men, women and children, raised slogans against the KWSB and urged the authorities to restore normal water supply to the affected localities without any further delay, otherwise they would continue their protest as long as they would remain deprived of water.
According to the protesters, water was not being supplied to various parts of Orangi for the past nine days. The hard-hit areas included all localities of Orangi falling under the jurisdiction of Union Council-9, Aziz Nagar, Ghausia Baloch Colony, Sector 15-D’s Thorani Goth, Bangla Bazaar, Sector 14, Block L of Sector 10, Pakistan Bazaar, Makhdoom Shah Colony (Sector 11 1/2) and Ghaziabad (Sector 16).
Lashing out at KWSB officials for not ensuring smooth and uninterrupted water supply to various parts of Orangi, protesters said, on the one hand, they had been deprived of water for the past nine days and, on the other, Rangers were charging money for providing water tankers to residents of water-starved localities.
They said the Rangers, instead of providing water tankers free of cost to residents of water-starved localities, were charging Rs150 for a tanker of 1,200 gallons and Rs300 for a tanker of 2,400 gallons of water.
DRY: Various parts in the city’s former district Central on Monday went without water in the wake of the KWSB’s plan of diverting water from the Indus source to the localities hooked to the Hub dam source.
The KWSB introduced a water-holiday system for the localities getting supply from the Indus source from Monday for diverting their water to the sprawling townships of Orangi, Baldia, Surjani, North Karachi and parts of the SITE industrial area, whose supply from the Hub source had been stopped about four days ago after the dam’s reservoir dried up.
The localities which did not receive water on Monday as part of the water- holiday system included all blocks of Federal B-Area, North Nazimabad, Buffer Zone, Nazimabad, Shadman Town and its nearby localities.
Areas which would go dry on Tuesday include Clifton, Gizri, Delhi Colony, Punjab Colony, Shireen Jinnah Colony, Bhutta Village, Naval Dockyard, NORE-1 and GE Army installation.
Water supply to some major hospitals of the city, including the JPMC, NICH and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, will also remain suspended on Tuesday.
Water supply to different parts of the city would remain suspended once in a week on rotation basis as long as the KWSB did not adopt some other alternative to diverting the Indus water to the localities hooked to the Hub source, sources in the KWSB said.
