KARACHI: Local Govern­ment Minister and chairman of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board Saeed Ghani, expressing his displeasure over the ongoing water crisis in the metropolis and increasing protests by people over water scarcity, has warned the chief engineer and XENs [executive engineers] of the areas that action would be initiated against them for failing to mitigate people’s complaints about water and sewage.

The minister gave this warning while presiding over a meeting of the KWSB in his office here on Tuesday. The meeting was attended, besides others, by KWSB managing director Asadullah Khan, all chief engineers, XENs and other officers concerned.

Referring to the increasing protest over the unjust distribution of water in the city, the minister directed the officials to bring improvement in water distribution to reduce complaints. He said if any complaints were received in that connection from any locality, immediate measures be taken on an emergency basis to provide relief to the people.

Officials of the KWSB told the minister about the obstacles being faced by them due to MPAs of a political party who influenced officials posted at the pumping stations to run the water distribution system according to their whims.

The minister asked the KWSB to provide a list of such pumping stations so that security arran­gements could be taken to depute police and Rangers to ensure implementation of the water distribution schedule. He also asked the KWSB officials to discharge their duties with honesty and not to succumb to any pressure and where they faced political pressure, they should let him know so that necessary measures be taken. The minister said: “We don’t believe [in] doing politics [over] the water issue.”

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2019