KARACHI, Dec 3: At least 150 houses in North Nazimabad have been without potable water for the last 13 days. They have been getting contaminated water from their mains, which cannot be consumed.

The residents fear that the problem would not be resolved by Eid so they will have to use contaminated water throughout the three days of the festival.

Rais Zaidi, a resident of the area, told Dawn on Tuesday that the problem had been highlighted by a newspaper about three days ago. “But the problem persists because nobody has tried to resolve it,” he said.

“It seems the KWSB people have simply stopped listening to what people have to say over this or any other issue.”

Another resident said the people residing in the area simply didn’t afford to buy water from tankers regularly. “May be we can pay Rs400 twice or thrice a month, but not every other day.

Mr Zaidi said he had gone through the trouble of providing some samples of contaminated water to the Town Nazim of the area. “But even the Nazim seems helpless.”

He said some of the residents had personally visited the KWSB engineer’s office to lodge a complaint but to no avail. “Due to these officials’ attitude, Ramazan became hell for us. I think we won’t be able to enjoy Eid as well.”