October 16, 2008	Thursday	Shawwal 16, 1429

KARACHI, Oct 15: The entire schedule of water supply to the city has been badly disrupted due to long spells of unannounced load-shedding and power outages.

Residents of various parts of the city have complained that on the one hand duration of water supply has been reduced considerably, while, on the other hand, they are getting supply with a low pressure.

“We often go without water as the timings water supply always coinciding with the timing of load-shedding in our areas,” people of a locality said.

Citing an example of the clash of schedules of water supply and load-shedding, a resident of Kharadar said that almost all localities situated near the Qasim Street often remain without water supply because of daily two hour load-shedding in their area. He said electricity goes off daily at 10.30am and restores at around 12.30am while the water supplying timing from the Jaffer Fudoo pumping station is 8am to 11.30am.

A spokesman of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board while talking to Dawn have admitted that the officials responsible for ensuring equal distribution of water in various localities of towns falling under their jurisdiction are facing difficulties in implementing the water supply schedule in the letter and spirit because of the different spells of unannounced load-shedding.

However, he refuted the affected localities’ residents’ claim that the duration of supply had been curtailed.

He said that as a matter of fact whenever water supply schedule of a locality was disrupted it was either because of load-shedding or power failure and the area get scant water supply with a low pressure due to that and people feel that the duration of their water supply had been reduced, which was in fact not correct.

He also confirmed the fact that whenever water supply schedule of a locality coincides with the timings of load-shedding, it either gets less than its actual quota of water or go without water.

He said that since most of the city’s localities were supplied water on alternative days, the gap between the supply normally widens to three days in case of load-shedding in their area.

He deplored that the KESC officials had not paid any heed to the KWSB’s repeated request of exempting its pumping stations from load-shedding.

He said that “had the water utility not installed generators at most of its local pumping stations, the city’s water supply situation would have been much more worse against the backdrop the frequent load-shedding.”