KARACHI, June 27: The Cantonment Board of Korangi Creek (CBKC) quivers as the threat of disconnection of its water supply by the KWSB hangs over it, and in turn it turns up the heat on the residents. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board has warned that if the many departments and institutions do not pay up the Rs33.9 million rupees they owe to it, their bulk water supplies would be disconnected.
Although the defaulters include giants such as the Karachi Port Trust, the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation and all the six cantonment boards of the city, the CBKC is the most susceptible to such actions. The only civilian population the board administers is called Bhitai Colony situated somewhere between the Defence Housing Authority and Korangi.
Even when the supply is on, the residents face immense hardship in getting water. The locality having more than 5,000 plots, and many more housing units, is divided into eight sectors – from A to H.
‘A’ is the luckiest sector as it receives water direct from a main carrying water to the old city areas. ‘B’ is second sector that gets adequate water. The rest of the sectors receive piped water only in patches.
Although a pumping station with a storage tank is built to distribute water received from the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, the system has become so faulty that it leaves out more houses than it supplies water to.
An alternative could have been supply through tankers. The CBKC once had two small tankers which supplied water free. One has disappeared all together after rusting to death. The other has been taken off the public service to be used for officials’ homes and offices.
Now residents run to the CBKC offices five kilometres away to get a slip on payment of Rs55 for a tanker of water. The staff there may ask the visitor to visit them again after three or more days. When they get a slip, they go to the pumping station to submit the slip for a private water tanker. But it is not easily obtained yet. They have to wait for several more days for their turn. And then they run after tanker drivers. Some may succeed and get water for the payment of another Rs100. Others, frustrated, settle down for underground water supplied by another set of tankers at a higher cost, both in terms of money and health.
A couple of non-governmental organizations have taken out processions to protest against the cantonment authorities’ neglect of the problems, approached higher authorities, including City Nazim Niamatullah Khan and the commander of the Korangi Creek air force base. Anything concrete has yet to come out of their efforts.
Now, a notice at the pumping station informs the visitors that the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board had warned that it would discontinue water supply by June 15 but had postponed the action at a special request.
The notice advises the consumers to clear their dues by June 30 or face a penal action for non-payment.
“Apparently the KCCB purports to collect the tax money and pay it to the KWBS to avert a crisis,” says a resident.
“But the amount the KCCB owes to the KWSB is too big to be collected from the poor residents. We already pay too much for too little. We pay the conservancy, water, property taxes and so on. They collect tax for water supply for which they have no justification,” he adds.
As the KWSB has warned many bulk consumers either to clear their dues or be deprived of water supply, residents fear that the KCCB would be the first among the departments whose supply would be cut off “because this is the poorest of the cantonment boards and there is no one to raise voice for it,” said a social worker.
“Why don’t they try to get their Rs27 million approved by the federal government but stuck in the relevant provincial department since 2004?” asked the man referring to the amount the CBKC is supposed to get in lieu of the octroi tax the Nawaz Sharif government had abolished in 1999. — Naseer Ahmad
