KARACHI, Dec 26: Hundreds of people belonging to Union Council No 1 of Liaquatabad town on Thursday staged a demonstration against persisting water shortage in the locality.

Accusing the officials of the city government’s water and sanitation department (W&S) of providing ‘illegal’ water connections from their locality’s pipeline to other areas of an adjacent town, the protesters alleged that despite the acute water shortage faced by the area a senior official of the W&S department was aggravating the problem by giving illegal connections to a locality of the SITE town.

Endorsing the claim of the protesters, who mostly belonged to Pak Sarhad Ittehad Colony, the nazim, Liaquatabad’s UC-1, Amir Hashmi, said that the W&S officials instead of improving the water supply situation in the locality, were bent upon creating law and order situation by providing ‘illegal’ connections.

He said that he had already brought the issue into the knowledge of the authorities concerned.

Acute water shortage also continued to prevail in different sectors of North Karachi, Bhadurabad No 3 and Clifton’s Block 2.

Residents of the affected localities regretted that although water shortage had been persisting for the last several months, the officials of the W&S department had, so far, failed to restore normal supply, forcing the people to buy water from the private water tankers at exorbitant rates.