KARACHI, Dec 10: An acute water shortage continued to persist in the city for the second day on Tuesday. The shortage is due to the non-supply of about 100 million gallons from Dhabeji (Phase-II) pumping station.
The supply of water from this pumping station was suspended for 36 hours — from 11.30am on Sunday to 11.30pm on Monday — causing a shortfall of around 100mgd. The supply was restored at 11.30pm on Monday but the overall supply to the city wouldn’t be normalised before Wednesday evening, according to the KWSB sources.
The KWSB officials said the KESC men had removed one of the two cable faults at the pumping station at 9.30pm on Sunday while the other fault was removed at 11.30pm on Monday.
Meanwhile, the residents of various parts of the city complained that their localities either went dry or received scant supply on Tuesday.
The hard-hit localities included Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s blocks 1, 2, 5, 10, 10-A, 13-A and 13-D-1; North Karachi’s sectors 11-C-1, 11-C-2, 11-A and 11-B; New Karachi’s sectors 5-C-2, 5-C-3, 5-D and 5-E. Parts of Old City and Lyari, besides various sectors of Orangi, Baldia, Shershah and Surjani Town, were also affected.
The upper- and middle-class residents of the localities said that in the absence of water they had to purchase water from tankers at exorbitant rates while those belonging to low-income groups said that they had no choice but to use sub-soil unAhygienic water at the cost of their health.
Taking undue advantage of persisting water shortage private tankers were charging between Rs400 and 500 per tanker, residents of the water-starved localities said.
The localities, which went without water on Tuesday as part of the KWSB’s plan of diverting Indus water to the areas hooked to the Hub dam source, included Clifton, Gizri, Delhi Colony, Punjab Colony, Shireen Jinnah Colony, Bhutta Village, Naval Dockyard, NORE-1, GE Army installation, Jinnah Post-graduate Medical Centre, National Institute of Child Health and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases.
Supply to the Old City, Garden East, Garden West, Soldier Bazaar, Saddar, Shikarpur Colony, Cosmopolitan Society and parts of Lyari would remain suspended on Wednesday.
