ABBOTTABAD: The people of different t areas of Abbottabad have said that they been experiencing acute shortage of drinking water for the last few days.

The residents of Upper and Lower Kehal, Kunj, Malikpura and main city localities alleged that municipal authorities turned a blind eye to their plight.

They said that they were forced to fetch water from far-off sources for domestic use.

The main reason of water shortage is the closure of water source from where clean water is tapped.

The residents said that whenever it rained in Abbottabad, they experienced water shortage as the main source from where water was supplied becomes muddy.

After rain, the management of much publicised gravity flow water scheme stopped the water supply as it could damage the filtration plants.

The management and the people both had to wait for the weather to clear so that they could get water from the scheme.

Interestingly, no authority takes responsibility for it as water distribution system is domain of local municipality as it collects taxes from the residents while public health department has been assigned the job to complete the project.

Sources said that both the departments were in tug of war on some technical and administrative matters, which led to suffering of people.

Previously, municipal committee was supplying water to the city through tubewells but now all the nine tubewells are either out of order or t abandoned by the committee.

“There is no alternative source in case of emergency,” said a member of the water supply staff at the main storage tank.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Rs4.5 billion gravity-flow drinking water supply scheme, funded by Japanese government, has been completed and handed over to the public health engineering department but the water crisis still persists in the city.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2015

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