KARACHI, Oct 20: Acute water shortage continued to persist in several parts of the city on Wednesday owing to frequent power failures.

Though several parts of the city remained in the grip of acute water shortage on Wednesday, people residing on either side of Lyari's D.D. Chaudhry Road (Union Council No 5, Baghdadi), Bismillah Colony and in the vicinity of the Lyari Telephone Exchange, were either deprived of water since July 31 or were getting scanty supply.

They deplored that the water issue in their locality was lingering since long, and even though over two dozen letters had been sent to almost every official concerned of the KWSB, the latter seemed least interested in getting the matter resolved.

People residing in various multi-storeyed buildings complained that since power failures had become a matter of routine in their localities, they were unable to pump water to their overhead tanks. "It was since the first sehri of Ramazan that power started playing hide and seek, while severity of the problem can be gauged from the fact that electricity went off at least five times on Tuesday only. And as such, we were unable to pump water to overhead tanks of our apartment building," a resident of Civic View apartments remarked.

Similar complaints were received from a number of other buildings of Gulshan-i-Iqbal's, Block 13/D/1 that included Dashtiar Pride, Friends, Hassan Apartments (Extension), Erum Garden, etc.

Endorsing the views of the water-starved localities, sources in the KWSB admitted that they were facing difficulties in ensuring uninterrupted water supply to some localities due to power failures at local pumping stations since the first of Ramazan. Residents of the affected localities deplored that although they had been experiencing acute water shortage since the advent of Ramazan, the KWSB officials concerned had failed to restore normal supply despite a number of complaints lodged with them.