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KARACHI, Feb 24: Parts of the city, especially those hooked to the Hub dam source, on Tuesday continued to experience an acute shortage of water persisting for a fortnight.
The hard-hit localities include various sectors of Baldia, Orangi, North Karachi, Surjani, Shershah, Manghopir, Site industrial area, Nazimabad Nos. 1, 3 and 4, parts of Paposhnagar, Hussain D'Silva Town, Paharr Ganj, Clifton's block 2, Bohra Pir, Ranchorr Line, Burnes Road, Gulshan-i-Iqbal's Scouts Colony and Federal B Area's blocks 14, 15 and 16.
Although water shortage in different parts of the formerly district West persists for more than a month, and turned acute gradually, the KWSB officials have not yet bothered to inform residents of the Hub-hooked areas that supply to their localities from the Hub source had been curtailed for undertaking repairs of a 66-inch rising main.
The supply had been curtailed to almost half in January and since then, many of these localities have been facing water shortage. At a time when several sectors of Orangi, Baldia, North Karachi, Shershah and Site industrial area have already been facing serious water shortage, water supply to Surjani Town was also badly affected on Tuesday after a 48-inch dia pipeline burst on Monday night.
Residents of the affected sectors of Surjani Town said that shortly after the incident, water supply to their localities was stopped. Complaints of persisting water shortage have also been received from the residents of Federal B Area's blocks 14, 15 and 16.
The affected consumers complained that while they often faced two-three day suspension of water supply in a week, the timings of supply had been changed, causing hardship to them in Muharram.
OVERFLOWING GUTTERS: An unhygienic environment prevails in different streets of Federal B Area's block 3 (Hussainabad) owing to overflowing gutters. People residing near the Memon Markaz complained that although filthy water had been overflowing from a number of gutters in their locality, the concerned KWSB officials were not paying attention to the problem.
They alleged that the contractors selected for the construction of manholes had used substandard material and had not properly connected manholes with the main sewerage line. Similar situation could be witnessed in the vicinity of Hassan Square owing to a ruptured pipelines.
DIRECTIVE: The MD of KWSB, Brig Asif Ghazali, has directed engineers to remove all sorts of encroachments from sewerage drains to ensure an unhindered flow of sewage.
He also asked them to undertake on a war-footing the work of removing sand, polythene bags, garbage, etc. from all sewerage lines as well as cleaning of pumping stations' chambers.
Brig Ghazali issued the directives during his visit to the various KWSB installations in Lyari and Clifton, Ejector-14 and Sheerin Jinnah Colony. He was accompanied by the Board's deputy managing director, Suleman Chandio, chief engineer (Sewerage) Fareed Soomro and chief engineer (Electric/ Mechanical) Israr Zaidi.
During his visit to Sheerin Jinnah Colony, he was told that the Colony's sewerage line had burst and a number of manholes broken owing to the establishment of an oil-tankers stand on the land having sewerage lines underneath.
