RAWALPINDI, Oct 26: About 60 per cent area in Rawalpindi Cantonment is without the pipeline network and people here are faced with great problems in getting potable water, well-placed sources told Dawn on Saturday.

Most of the Dhokes, New Lalazar, Upper Deval, etc are so far totally deprived of water supply from the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB).

However, some of the residents of these areas have dug up the bores to get water, while others depend on other sources.

Worse than this is the fact that these people have no chance to get water from the RCB in near future, as according to the RCB officials, the available water is not even enough for the areas, which are presently linked to the civic body’s water supply network.

The sources said the RCB was facing a shortage of about 32 million gallons of water per day (mgd). The cantonment board has only 13 mgd available with it, whereas the total requirement in the area is about 45 mgd.

About five mgd water is received from the Rawal Lake, another five mgd from 73 tube wells whereas three mgd is received from the Khanpur Dam, they added.

They said that two or three tube wells remained dysfunctional almost everyday.

On the other hand, a number of residents complained that they were being supplied with contaminated water because of the faulty RCB water supply network.

To cater to the needs of the complainants, the RCB has installed six water filtration plants to provide clean drinking water, the sources said.

These plants are located in Chaklala-III, Gawalmandi, Dheri Hassanabad, Tench Bata, Peshawar Road and Allama Iqbal Colony, they added.

Each of the filtration plant has a big water tank with taps, from which people can have filtered water for their use.

Residents of different areas, where these plants have been installed, have greatly appreciated the RCB efforts.

The people said they were facing great problems because sometimes they received contaminated water due to leakage in the water supply pipelines.

On the other hand, the residents of the areas, where no filtration plants have been installed, have complained against what they termed “discriminatory approach of the cantonment officials”.

There are various localities within the cantonment jurisdiction where residents are faced with problems in getting clean drinking water.

Some of such areas are Marrir Hassan, Kamalabad, Dhoke Syedan, Dhoke Banaras, Bakramandi, Dhoke Chaudhrian, and Ahmedabad.