KARACHI, Oct 26: A vast area of the city’s former districts East, West and Central went without water on Saturday, giving a boost to the sale of private tankers in the water-starved localities.

The affected localities included North Nazimabad Town, SITE Town, Orangi Town, parts of Gulberg Town, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, KDA Scheme-33 and Gulshan-i-Iqbal (blocks 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 10-A, 13-A, 13-B, 16, 17 and 18).

Water supply to various parts of former districts Central and East was suspended in the wake of an 18-hour closure which the KWSB applied on Saturday at its North-East Karachi (K-2) pumping station for setting up a transformer and carrying out interconnection work of pipelines.

Residents of the affected areas said that private tankers, in high demand in their localities, were charging between Rs400 and 500 per tanker.

The KWSB’s deputy managing director (technical services), Suleman Chandio, said that the closure was necessitated to undertake the interconnection work of pipelines for providing filtered water to most of the localities of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and also to release an additional 10 million gallons of water per day to the Board Office pumping station directly from the University reservoir.

He said that the work pertaining to interconnection of pipelines and the transformer would be completed by Saturday night, and normal supply of water to all the affected areas of former districts Central and East would be restored from the NEK (K-2) pumping station on Sunday.

About the KWSB’s current plan of suspending water supply of localities once a week on a rotation basis for diverting Indus water to the areas hooked to the Hub source, he said that there would be no suspension of water supply on Sundays for any part of the city getting Indus water.

Meanwhile, acute water shortage continued to persist in various localities of Orangi Town. The hard-hit areas include Chishti Nagar, Mansoor Nagar, Ghaziabad and Yaqubabad.