KARACHI, May 5: Acute water shortage continued to persist in various parts of the city, forcing the residents of the water- starved localities to either buy private tankers at exorbitant rates or consume subsoil unhygienic water at the cost of their health.

The hard-hit areas include Orangi’s (Sector 14-C) Bilal Colony, Sector 11 1/2, North Nazimabad’s blocks P, Q, R, S, T, Pahar Ganj, Allama Iqbal Town, Hussain D’ Silva Town, Bahadurabad No 3 and parts of North Karachi and Surjani Township.

According to the residents of the affected areas, they have been getting scant supply with low pressure after every three or four days and all their complaints in this regard have, so far, gone in vain.

The residents of Orangi’s Bilal Colony (Union Council No 8) said that they had been experiencing acute water shortage since 1999, none of the concerned executive engineers of the KWSB’s Orangi division ever took any interest in resolving their lingering water issue despite a number of complaints lodged with them from time to time.

The Bilal Colony Welfare Society’s general secretary, Aftab Alam Ashrafi, complained that although the inhabitants of the Colony had been paying water charges bills to the KWSB since 1981, the utility service had not yet laid any pipeline in four streets of the colony for providing water.

Recalling that the KWSB had approved a plan for laying 1200- feet long pipelines of 6-inch dia and 500-feet pipeline of 4-inch dia pipeline in 1998 to help provide water to the affected colony, he said the plan was still in doldrums owing to bureaucratic approach.

He demanded of the city Nazim and the KWSB managing director to expedite the process of laying the pipelines for Bilal Colony.

CTO compound: Ten days after clearing their dues to water board, residents of the CTO compound on II Chundrigar Road are still living without water, adds PPI.

Director estate STR-II PTCL Karachi, Mazhar Shaikh, informed that he had deposited outstanding payment KW&SB against CNT No:93&99 amounting to Rs0.8 million on April 23, when they disconnected water connection to the residential area of PTCL employees.

Several reminders by the director estate to the KW&SB for resumption of water supply have proved futile.

The KW&SB has also disconnected the water supply to two famous sports venues of the city for non payment of dues.