ABBOTTABAD: The people of Abbottabad city have been facing acute water shortage for the last five days, but the municipal body is least bothered to rectify the situation.

The areas badly hit by the water shortage include Kehal, Kunj, Malikpura and main city localities. However, the municipal authorities have failed to address this grave public issue.

Despite the fact that a Japanese government-funded Rs4.5 billion gravity-flow drinking water supply scheme has been completed and handed over to the public health engineering department, the water crisis in the city still persists, especially during rainy days.

The project was aimed to ensure smooth water supply to city and its surrounding areas.

Residents of the affected localities have been making hue and cry over the problem, but the alleged tug-of-war between the public health engineering department and the tehsil municipal administration is causing inconvenience to them.

A source told Dawn that the water shortage was caused by choking of the pipeline bringing water to the district from Galyat during rain. He said that the scheme had technical flaws and became inoperative whenever there was rain.

The source said the municipal body routinely collected taxes from the residents, but failed to ensure smooth water supply, adding that the public health engineering department also showed apathy towards resolving the problem. He said both the departments were at loggerheads over some technical and administrative matters to the misery of the general public.

Meanwhile, an official said that the nine tube-wells supplying water to the city areas had long gone out of order, but the TMA failed to repair these.

The local residents complained that provincial minister for information Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, who hails from Abbottabad, had assured the people of his constituency that a water board would be created to resolve the problem, but no step had so far been taken in that regard.

It may be mentioned here that the present government had provided Rs12.5 million for replacement of old pipelines in the city as sewage got mixed with the drinking water, but the project is still incomplete despite passage of six months.

Residents of Madni Mohallh in Malikpura told this correspondent that the concerned authority had dug out pipelines in the area about three months ago but failed to replace them despite repeated reminders. They said a delegation of local people had also apprised the deputy commissioner about the problem, but to no avail.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2015

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