KARACHI: Line burst causes water crisis in many areas
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, June 3: Bursting of a 66-inch dia rising main between Hub pumping station and reservoir and abrupt suspension of water supply from the Hub Dam source to the city on Tuesday created water crisis in the areas hooked to the Hub source.
A 66-inch dia rising main, which connects Hub pumping station with the Hub reservoir, burst at 10am on Tuesday, reportedly owing to some digging work, which was being undertaken near the site of an under-construction filter plant.
With the bursting of the rising main, not only a huge quantity of water was wasted but all those areas whose supply was on and which included Mianwalli Colony, parts of Baldia Town and Shershah, came to a halt.
Though the officials of the city government’s water and sanitation department told Dawn that the repair work on the affected pipeline would be completed by Thursday, as the welding work had already been initiated, residents of sprawling townships of Surjani Town, Baldia and Orangi apprehend that their localities would remain dry during next couple of days.
Residents of Orangi’s different union councils (UCs 5, 7, 9 and parts of UC 8), complained that although the pipeline had burst on Tuesday, their localities were without water for the last two weeks. A councillor of Orangi Town, Aftab Ahmed, complained that on the one hand, a number of localities including Ghausia Colony, Makhdoom Shah Colony, Ghaziabad, Chisti Nagar, Aziz Nagar, Ali Nagar and its adjoining localities were deprived of water for the last two weeks and, on the other, Rangers had allegedly stopped issuing slips for providing free tankers in the affected areas.
HUB DAM: A high-level meeting held here on Tuesday, which was presided over by Sindh additional chief secretary, Ghulam Sarwar Khehro, decided to suspend the city’s supply from the Hub Dam, following a reduction in the water level in the dam’s reservoir, to 277 RL (Reservoir Level).
The meeting, however, decided to resume the supply to the city and Lasbella from the Hub source within a couple of days, through pumping of water from reservoir to the canal on rotation basis.
Under the arrangements made for getting water from the drying up Hub source, both the Water and Sanitation department and Balochistan governmentagreed to install their pumps to get the supply from the source on rotation basis, the sources said, adding that once the supply from the source was resumed, Karachi would be supplied water for 72 hours and Balochistan for 48 hours on rotational basis.
The W&S department officials also agreed to pay the electricity charges of the pumps, which they would be installing for getting the supply from the source, to Wapda in advance. The meeting was attended, among others, by the W&S department’s Managing Director, Brig (Retd) Javed Ashraf, deputy managing director (Technical Services) Suleman Chandio and senior officials of Wapda and Balochistan’s Irrigation department.
Meanwhile, complaints of persisting water shortage continued to pour in newspaper offices from different parts of the city. Most of such complaints were received from the residents of North Nazimabad’s blocks I, J, K, L and T, Jamshed Town’s UC-4, Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s blocks 4, parts of 4-A, 10, Clifton’s blocks 2 and 5, Mehmoodabad, Akhtar Colony, Manzoor Colony, Kharadar and parts of Lyari. Residents of North Nazimabad’s affected blocks complained that although they had been going without water for the last five days, the officials concerned had not yet bothered to take measures for restoring the supply.
