October 30, 2008	Thursday	Shawwal 30, 1429

KARACHI, Oct 29: Around 50 houses, located in Sector 36-B, Zamanabad, Landhi, have been receiving contaminated water for the last four days.

Residents of the affected area said that they had been getting contaminated water since the supply, which remained suspended for over three months, was restored.

They said that the water being supplied to the area was yellow and had a bad odour. They said it seemed that sewage seeped into the water supply line.

Fearing that waterborne diseases might break out in the area, they demanded of the authorities to rectify the fault responsible for contamination.

They deplored that they had lodged a complaint with the KWSB office located in Landhi No 3-˝, Babar Market.

However, neither water board officials visited the locality to ascertain the cause of contamination nor the supply of filthy water was suspended.

Meanwhile, power failures and long spells of unannounced load-shedding affected the water supply to most areas in the city.

Admitting that the water supplying schedule for almost the entire city has been disrupted because of the frequent outages and long spells of load-shedding, a water board official said that power outages at local pumping stations had made it difficult for the staff associated with the water distribution system to follow the schedule.

The official said: “Though the KWSB has installed generators at most of its local pumping stations, all the other pumping stations where generators are not available remain idle during the long spells of load-shedding.

“Hence, the localities hooked to these pumps either go dry or get scant supply on their turn of water supply,” he added.

Pointing out that many localities were supplied water on alternative days, he said the areas that once missed their turn due to power outages continued to suffer water shortages for a couple of days till their next turn of supply.

“We have repeatedly requested the Karachi Electric

Supply Company to exempt the pumping stations from load-shedding, but no positive response has ever been received from the power utility,” the official deplored.