May 23, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 17, 1429

KARACHI, May 22: Despite the fact that the acrimony that has had developed between the Sindh LG minister and the city nazim over the control of the KWSB and the KBCA has started to fade out mainly due to the efforts of the Sindh governor, the issue as to who will head the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board still remains unresolved.

Currently, the KWSB is being headed simultaneously by two officials – Suleman Chandio and Ghulam Arif – as the managing director of the KWSB and the executive district officer of the CDGK’s water and sanitation group of offices, respectively.

This situation has created immense confusion among the officials of the water utility as they are in a fix as to whose directives they should be following.

“Mr Chandio claims that the Sindh government through a notification issued on May 20 has appointed him as the new managing director of the KWSB and he has also furnished his joining report to the local government department whereas Mr Arif asserts that he continues to be the EDO of the W&S group of offices,” said a senior KWSB official who requested not to be named.

He said that currently all the employees of the KWSB had been sandwiched between the two heads of the organisation and if such a situation continued to prevail it would definitely hamper the overall working of the utility, which would ultimately affect the consumers.

Meanwhile, a number of senior officials of the KWSB while justifying the position taken by Mr Chandio of being the lawful managing director of the KWSB said that he had assumed the office as the KWSB chief following the issuance of a notification by the Sindh government.

Interestingly, the notification, through which Mr Chandio has been appointed the KWSB chief, has reportedly been kept in abeyance following Tuesday’s meeting which was convened by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad at the Governor’s House to bring about a rapprochement between Sindh Local Government Minister Agha Siraj Durrani and City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal.

However, when the attention of the KWSB officials was drawn towards this aspect of the issue, they argued that as per the law, the notification through which Mr Chandio had been appointed as the managing director would continue to stand since no other notification through which the earlier notification was kept in abeyance had, so far, been issued by the government.

Admitting that the KWSB was nowadays facing a serious financial crisis, insiders apprehended that if the prevailing uncertainty continued, the utility’s development works would eventually come to a halt and its water and sewerage services would be badly affected.