BALAKOT, Oct 5: About 20,000 people in Balakot, which was devastated in last year’s earthquake, have been facing severe shortage of drinking water for a month, according to local authorities.

The local authorities are looking for external donor support to solve the problem, United Nations information unit IRIN quoted an official as saying.

“The area has been facing persistent water shortage since the rainy season ended in August. We are delivering one water tanker daily for the town’s population but that’s insufficient. However, we do not have enough financial resources to increase this supply,” Municipal Administrator Tila Mohammad said.

“People have to get water from quite a distance if they are unable to get it from the municipal authority’s water tanker,” Al Haji Bah, head of the Mansehra office of the United Nations Children’s Fund, said.

To meet the immediate water needs of the population after the earthquake, several humanitarian agencies started supplying potable water from tankers and installed infiltration plants, which remained operational till the end of the earthquake relief phase.

Two water-supply schemes, which had been rehabilitated to meet the needs of people of the town, were washed away by heavy monsoon flooding in August.

Since then, the local authorities have been stretched to meet the needs. “It costs us some Rs3,000 per day to operate one 30,000-litre tanker,” an official said.

However, the relocation will take at least three years, according to officials at the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority.

“Since the area has been declared red zone, nobody is working to install any water-supply scheme here. The town needs instant transitional arrangements,” said Mohammad Idrees Khan, Manager of Oxfam’s water-supply rehabilitation programme in Mansehra district.

MIDWIFE DISAPPEARS: Police have arrested the husband and two sons of a midwife who is alleged to have kidnapped a new born Afghan baby from the Khyber Teaching Hospital.