HYDERABAD, Aug 7: A number of women held a demonstration outside the press club here on Tuesday in protest against prolonged power outages and an acute shortage of drinking water in Hyder Shah Colony, Paretabad, for the last two weeks.

Carrying banners and placards, they raised slogans against the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) and Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa).

Protesters Saghiran and Zainab told reporters that local people were facing an ordeal of prolonged electricity breakdowns which caused shortage of water.

They said continuous breakdowns in Ramzan had made their lives difficult because they had to make arrangements for Sehri and Iftar without electricity.

They said they were fed up with the shortage of water and unannounced power loadsheddings.

They said they had been paying inflated bills of power and water and sewerage facilities regularly but Hesco and Wasa were not giving any relief to them.

They said they had appealed to the high-ups of Hesco and Wasa to take notice of these problems but no one was paying attention to them.

They urged the government to provide relief to people of the area by solving the problems.

PPP workers’ threat

Workers of the Pakistan People’s Party from the constituency of PS-46 (Hyderabad) threatened on Tuesday to go on a hunger strike if heaps of garbage were not removed from their localities and development works did not start there in a week.They appealed to Sindh Minister for Local Bodies Agha Siraj Khan Durrani to take notice of civic problems in Tando Wali Mohammad, Khai Road, Tando Thoro, Tando Mir Mehmood, Tando Agha, Talab Number 3, Khokhar Mohallah and other areas.

Addressing a press conference, PPP workers Aqil Sammon, Syed Asif Ali Shah and Zawar Abdul Sattar Dars said the localities had been neglected for the last four years.

They said that no development work had been done there during the current tenure of the PPP government. Everywhere were heaps of garbage emitting foul smell in the old areas of the district, they said.

They said they had appealed to officers of the local administration repeatedly but no action was taken so far.