27 February 2004	Friday	06 Muharram 1425

KARACHI, Feb 26: The KWSB on Thursday claimed that it had disinfected the water chamber from where a headless body of a woman was recovered on Friday last.

Deputy Managing Director (Technical Services) Suleman Chandio explained that an analysis of the sample taken after removal of the body had shown no traces of any bacteria. However, Managing Director Brig Asif Ghazali had directed the officials of the Bulk Supply to disinfect the chamber through chlorination process.

In reply to a question that whether the headless, and also decomposed as per the police version, body might have polluted whole of the water in the tank, Mr Chandio claimed that the body had not remained in the chamber for a long period.

"Stay of a body for a short period of time, and that too in a chamber carrying 150 million gallons of water daily, may not leave its effects on the quality of water," he observed.

The body was found and recovered from the water chamber, located near Safari Park, on Friday last and the incident had created doubts among the citizens about the quality of water being supplied to the city.

CONTAMINATED WATER: Over a dozen children have fallen sick after drinking contaminated water in Nazimabad's Aurangabad locality. According to residents of the affected locality, a number of people, especially children and elderly persons, have already developed symptoms of nausea and the doctors whom they approached upon examination, told them that they had been affected due to drinking of contaminated water.

Being perturbed with the alarming situation caused due to seepage of sewage in to the pipeline, a large number of residents on Wednesday staged a demonstration near Paposhnagar's Chandni Chowk to voice their anger over continuous supply of filthy water.

Accusing the KWSB officials of not taking effective measures for rectifying the fault responsible for contaminating the water supply, the protesters said that initially their water supply was stopped about seven days back and it was for the last three days that they were being supplied blackish colour water, having bad smell.

On being informed that a demonstration was being staged at Chandni Chowk, the North Nazimabad Town's Naib Nazim, Maqsood Khan, rushed to the scene and tried to pacify the agitating crowd.

The protesters told the Naib Nazim that sewage had been entering into the pipeline supplying water to their locality as the same had been broken at a number of places by workers of the KWSB contractor, while laying a sewerage line in Aurangabad, near Umer Masjid.

They also lamented that all their complaints with concerned KWSB officials had, so far, gone unheeded. Later, the Naib Nazim along with KWSB's executive engineer, Rafiq Turk and sub-engineer Qavi Jamal, visited the location of the broken pipeline from where a considerable quantity of water was gushing out.

He asked the KWSB officials to immediately undertake proper and effective repairs of the broken pipeline and restore the supply of the affected locality without any further delay. He told the angry residents that the Town's Nazim, Fasihuddin, would personally take interest in resolving the problem.