KARACHI: A large number of people from parts of West and Central districts staged a protest demonstration at the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board’s office on Sharea Faisal and demanded that water be provided to their localities immediately.

The protesters said that their areas — Pahargunj, Kati Pahari etc — and other areas of both the districts got scarce supply of water during the past few weeks owing to which residents faced great hardship. They demanded that arrangements be made for instant supply of water to their localities.

The protesters were chanting slogans and asking that when water was not coming in the pipelines in their areas, where the water tanker operators got water from to sell at exorbitant rates in the areas, where a majority of the population belonged to the low-income group.

A senior KWSB official, Asad Khan, spoke to the protesters and told them that there was an overall shortage of water in the city, and their localities in West and Central districts were connected with the Hub Dam, where very little water was available now. He said that earlier about 100 million gallons of water daily was supplied from the dam, but now only a fraction of it was available.

He assured the protesters that efforts were being made to provide water to the water-scarce areas through alternative sources and “hopefully” the situation would improve shortly.

Responding to Dawn’s queries, a KWSB spokesperson said that the city’s requirement of water was around 1,200mgd, but currently only around 500mgd water was being supplied to it, so almost the whole city faced a water shortage.

He said earlier around 100mgd water was supplied from the Hub Dam but owing to no rains in the dam’s catchment area, the water level in the reservoir had gone critically low and currently only around 20 per cent of the normal supply was coming from there.

He said that since almost the entire West district and many portions of Central district were hooked to the Hub source, those areas were getting very little water. He said that almost 50mgd of water was being diverted from the Indus water supply network to the Hub pumping station for supply to those areas.

He said the KWSB was installing heavy-duty pumps in the Hub reservoir and they would be operational in the next few days after which around 35mgd water would be coming to the city. He said he hoped that once the pumps became operational, the situation would improve in the water-scarce areas. He said that with the present storage at the dam, those pumps could supply water to the city for six to eight weeks. By then the monsoon would have started and there would be sufficient rainfall in the dam’s catchment area.

He said that in the meantime the KWSB was supplying water through tankers. He said many community water tanks had been rehabilitated and constructed so that people got water from there till the situation improved.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2018