KARACHI, Dec 23: The city government’s Water and Sanitation Department (WSD) had done away with the water-holiday system for most of the towns of the city.
However, the towns which would continue to go dry once in a week include Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Saddar, Jamshed, North Nazimabad and Gulberg.
The KW&SB, which has now become a department of the city government with the name of Sewerage and Sanitation Department, had introduced the water-holiday system in the third week of October for the localities getting supply from the Indus source to divert the water to the sprawling townships of Orangi, Baldia, Surjani, North Karachi, Shershah and parts of the SITE industrial area which had gone dry following stoppage of their supply from the Hub dam source.
A senior official of the WSD, Salman Chandio, told Dawn that the decision of suspending water supply once in a week to the five towns — Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Saddar, Jamshed, North Nazimabad and Gulberg — had been taken because most of the houses of these towns had the facility of underground tanks and as such the residents of these towns could meet their water requirement of the day when their localities would go dry.
FILTHY WATER: Various houses in Federal B Area’s Block 2 (Hussainabad) and North Nazimabad’s Block A are being supplied contaminated water for the last one week.
The affected consumers in Hussainabad said that although they had been receiving stinking water for the last one week, the concerned officials of the city government’s water and sewerage wing had not yet bothered to rectify the persisting problem despite several complaints lodged with them.
Suspecting that the sewage might be seeping into the pipeline, they demanded of the city Nazim and the executive district officer of the city government’s water and sewerage wing to direct the concerned officials to rectify the problem without any further delay. They warned that those consuming the filthy water might become victims of serious diseases.
A similar complaint had been received from the residents of North Nazimabad’s Block A.
Meanwhile, acute water shortage continued to persist in several sectors of sprawling townships of Orangi, North Karachi and Surjani.
Residents of the affected sectors of Orangi and North Karachi regretted that in spite of the fact that they were being supplied water after every 72 hours, they go scant supply with a low pressure as a result of which they could not store a sufficient quantity of water for the upcoming dry spell.
They urged the City Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, to direct the executive district officer of the Water and Sanitation Department to provide them water on alternative days, instead of 72 hours as it was not possible for them to store water for three days owing to non-availability of underground tanks or any other proper storage facilities in their houses.
