KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Friday directed the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research to test the water being supplied to the city by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board as it rejected the report of the water utility.

A division bench comprising Justices Nadeem Akhtar and Muhammad Iqbal Kalhoro ordered the PCSIR and KWSB to submit the requisite report within three weeks and put off the hearing to a date to be later announced by the court’s office.

The bench was hearing a constitutional petition seeking supply of clean water to citizens.

The petition was filed by Rana Faizul Hasan, a civil rights campaigner and secretary general of the United Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over two years ago.

The court time and again expressed its extreme displeasure and annoyance over the provincial and city authorities and chief of the KWSB for dragging their feet on ensuring supply of potable water to the city.

During a previous hearing, the court also took a swipe at the water utility chief and the Karachi commissioner and directed them to explain why action against them could not be taken for disobeying the court orders as they did not file their respective reports on preventive and precautionary steps for supply of clean drinking water.

The respondent officials were repeatedly asked by the court to file their comments on the steps taken by them for the supply of potable water to the city, but to no avail.

The petitioner submitted in the petition that the supply of potable water to citizens was the duty of the KWSB but it was supplying water to citizens without filtration.

He stated that daily 100 million gallons of water was misused due to a lack of proper maintenance of water supply lines and the citizens were facing a shortage of 300mgd of water.

He said according to newspaper reports potable water was being supplied to citizens without any filtration and without adding chlorine to it.

The petitioner told the judges that the toxic effluent from the industrial estates of Nooriabad and Korti had been flowing into the Keenjhar lake that supplied water to the city and the adjoining district of Thatta.

He said the water utility was supplying potable water without filtration in violation of the KWSB Act, 1996. The petitioner asked the court to direct the KWSB to ensure supply of drinkable water to the citizens after filtration.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play