KARACHI, June 8: The water board valve-men tampering with the city water supply valve operation has created an artificial water shortage in various parts of the city, forcing residents of the affected localities to either purchase private tankers at exorbitant rates or consume unhygienic subsoil water at the cost of their health, sources told Dawn.

The menace of tampering with valve operation has assumed an alarming proportion in those localities where there are huge housing complexes, apartment buildings and high-rise buildings, they said.

The KWSB valve-men whose task is to operate valves of the localities where they are deputed during their turn of getting water have reportedly fixed a certain unlawful amount for ensuring better supply to those housing complexes and apartment buildings and associations of these complexes have no option but to pay the amount every month to get water.

Inquiries made in this regard show the occupants of those apartment buildings and huge housing complexes whose welfare associations refuse to oblige the valve-men, have to face water shortage as the valve-men either curtail the duration of their supply or release the supply with a very low pressure.

The modus operandi adopted by such valve-men is that they tamper with valves in a manner that when they want to release water with pressure they give a maximum turn to a valve and when they want to supply water with a low pressure they leave the valve half opened, the sources said.

Office-bearers of different apartment buildings and huge housing complexes, specially those located in PECHS, Bahadurabad, Mohammad Ali Society, Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Gulistan-i-Jauhar have complained that the valve-men of their localities have fixed Rs2,000 for an apartment and housing complex having 100 flats or houses, Rs3,000 for an apartment building having more than 200 flats and Rs6,000 for an apartment building having more than 500 units.

They alleged that “if we ever refuse to accede to the valve-men’s unjust demand of monthly ‘bhatta’, they either reduce the duration of our supply or release it with such a low pressure that we cannot meet the water needs of the occupants of our apartment buildings”.

They said: “Whenever we bring such a situation into the notice of the valve-men concerned, they simply reply that they were not being able to implement their schedule of the supply as the utility’s departments concerned [Bulk Supply and Water Trunk Main] were supplying them less than their fixed quota of water.”

They alleged that in such a situation they have no choice but to bribe the valve-men so that the occupants of the apartment buildings might not suffer.

When asked whether they had lodged any complaint against such valve-men with the supervisors or engineers of the locality concerned, the president of a Gulshan-i-Iqbal apartment building welfare association, on the condition of anonymity, said that he and other office-bearers of his association had repeatedly brought the issue into the notice of the assistant engineer and the executive engineer concerned but they did not take any action against the valve-men.

They said that they too had started bribing the valve-men so that the occupants of the apartment building might not suffer water shortage in the current hot weather.

However, when a senior official of the KWSB associated with the Bulk Supply department was asked to comment on the valve-men’s claim that the localities where they were deputed were being supplied less than their actual quota of water, he not only refuted the valve-men’s allegations but endorsed the contention of some apartment buildings’ welfare associations office-bearers that a number of valve-men were deceiving residents of different localities merely to mint money by tampering with valve operation of their localities.