KARACHI, May 25: About 200,000 consumers of piped water in the Old City area are exposed to serious health risk due to contaminated water supply for the last one week.
Residents of Kharadar and Mithadar complained on Sunday that they were getting water mixed with sewage and that effluent particles were quite visible. They said that consumers were being made to suffer from water-borne disease and other medical problems.
A local welfare organization’s office-bearer, Anwar Hussain, told APP that only a few people of the area had access to some source of potable water for their consumption.
He said that repeated complaints lodged by the affected people with the concerned authorities over the last week had fallen on deaf ear.
He expressed the fear that the poor quality water could lead to the outbreak of a certain disease in the areas.—APP
SHORTAGE: Various parts of the city continued to remain in the grip of an acute water shortage on Saturday, our staff reporter adds.
The hard-hit areas included Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s blocks 4, 4-A, 5, 7, 10, 13-D/2, 13-D/3; Clifton’s block 2 and 5; parts of Garden East, Lyari, Old Golimar, Mithadar, Kharadar, Pakistan Chowk and Haqqani Chowk.
Residents of Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s affected blocks complained that since they were deprived of water for the last one week, they had no choice but to buy private tankers at exorbitant rates.
“We have lodged complaints, about suspension of the supply, with the concerned officials of the Water and Sanitation Department on a number of occasions, yet none of the officials has even bothered to inform us about the cause of lingering water issue,” a resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s block 4-A deplored.
Meanwhile, residents of other affected localities, particularly those belonging to Old City areas, complained that although water shortage had become a chronic problem in their localities, the officials concerned seemed least bothered in restoring normal supply.
Complaints of persisting water shortage have also been received from different sectors of Orangi, Baldia and Shershah. The residents said that despite the fact that they were supplied water after every five days, the officials of the W&S department often fail to implement their schedule of supply.
