April 11, 2008	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 4, 1429

KARACHI, April 10: The Rangers’ reluctance to return the control of nine hydrants over to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) – despite the expiry of at least three deadlines fixed for the purpose – has further delayed the city government’s plan for ‘one hydrant for one town.’

The decision to return the control of Rangers-manned hydrants to the KWSB was taken in Nov-Dec 2006 after which the two deadlines of June 18 and July 1, 2007, set for implementing the decision, were not met due to various reasons.

The Sindh government recently directed the KWSB to take control of all the nine hydrants from the Rangers but this directive has also not been complied by so far.

Asked why the KWSB has failed to comply with the Sindh government’s directive, well-placed sources in the water utility blamed the delay on the Rangers. “The KWSB has repeatedly requested the Rangers to make arrangements for the smooth transfer of all nine hydrants back to the city so that control over them could be given to all the town municipal administration (TMAs),” said the sources. “Through tankers, the TMAs would then provide water to the water-deficient pockets in their areas.”

However, a Rangers’ spokesperson recently told Dawn that the Rangers were willing to hand the hydrants over to the KWSB but the matter was being delayed by the water utility.

When informed about this, a senior official of the KWSB said that the allegation against his organisation was unfounded. “The managing director of the water utility sent a letter to the Rangers’ director-general requesting him to fix a date for the smooth transfer of the hydrants to the City District Government Karachi and thereby the KWSB and the TMAs,” he said. “However, we have so far failed to receive any positive response from the Rangers.”

Citizens’ rights infringed

The Rangers were given control of the KWSB hydrants in 1999, when the city was in the grip of a severe water shortage due to the fact that the Hub Dam, which supplied 100 million gallons of water a day to the city at the time, had dried up.

Sources within the KWSB reiterated that once the hydrants were returned to the water utility’s control, they would initially be operated by the KWSB and would later be transferred to the municipal administration of the town where they are located, enabling the towns to supply water to the deficient pockets in their jurisdictions.

The purpose of making hydrants town-specific is to ensure that tankers drawing water from the hydrant of a certain town deliver the water only to localities falling within that town’s limits.

Currently, tankers draw water from Rangers-manned hydrants and supply it to other parts of the city. Not only does this infringe upon various localities’ right to water from the hydrants in their areas, the unfettered movement of tankers along city roads has also been blamed for an increasing number of fatal accidents and the damage done to various roads by their weight and leaking water nozzles.