KARACHI, July 17: Water overflowing from the under-construction Mubarak dam, 24 kilometre from Hawkesbay in Keamari Town, on Thursday entered a number of houses and inundated the approach road of the village.

Karachi DCO Mir Hussain Ali, accompanied by EDO (works) Brig Zaheer Quadri and EDO (Revenue) Mohammad Hussain Syed, visited Mubarak Village and the dam’s site and directed the officials to immediately make arrangements for flushing out water from the dam to prevent any danger to the residents of the village.

Keamari Town’s Union Council-8 Nazim Mubarak Singo Baloch told Dawn that a considerable quantity of water which started overflowing from the dam in the wake of Thursday’s rain entered four houses. This situation, he added, triggered panic in the village as people thought the dam’s embankment had been washed away. The actual position was that water had started overflowing from a portion of the embankment where earth-filling work had been abandoned about four months back.

The UC Nazim, who with Keamari Town Nazim Zulfiqar Younus, visited the village on Thursday evening, said that if the city government had completed the embankment’s earth-filling work on schedule, June 30, water from the dam would not have escaped. The dam was being constructed by the city government with the assistance World Bank for providing water to Mubarak Village, having over 600 houses with 1,200 registered voters.

However, a spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, Rizwan Edhi, told Dawn that the water overflowing from the dam had not only caused damages to about 90 houses of the village but had also submerged its approach road.