KARACHI, Nov 15: Several industries in the SITE area, the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and thousands of residential units would remain without water on Friday and Saturday owing to an unscheduled and hasty 24-hour closure being applied by the KWSB to replace a 33 inches dia rising main near the office of Board of Secondary Education.
The areas, which would remain without water between 8am on Friday and 8am on Saturday, include SITE, entire Nazimabad, Paposhnagar, Pirabad, Pathan Colony Pump House, Banaras Pump House, Ashraf Nagar, Pahar Ganj and adjoining localities.
It is perhaps for the first time in the history of the KWSB that the residents of the affected localities have not been issued a prior advisory, asking them to store water. Instead they would be learning about an “impromptu closure” through newspapers the same day on which they would not be supplied water.
Sources said that such a hasty decision would definitely boost the sale of private tankers at exorbitant rates as a bulk of the affected consumers would be industrial units.
The management of the ASH would also find itself in a difficult situation because it, too, would have to reschedule/postpone operations, added the sources.
The residents of the area would also suffer in the absence of water.
Previously, the KWSB used to make such an announcement prior to the closure and used to give a minimum of two days to the people to store water.
Inquiries revealed that such a spontaneous closure was being made without consulting the KWSB’s managing director as he is out of the city.
Insiders told Dawn that it was amazing that the file proposing the 24-hour closure for replacing a piece of the pipeline was moved by the superintending engineer (Trunk Mains) to the chief engineer (water distribution) and the concerned XEN only on Thursday, and it was okayed by the senior officials of the KWSB the same day.
The decision was taken in such a haste, that the KWSB even did not make alternative arrangements for supplying water to the residents of affected areas, in general and the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, in particular, through diversions, the sources added.
It is the second such closure during a short span of 14 days as the previous one of 36 hours was applied from Nov 2 to 4. However, an announcement about the earlier closure was made two days before its implementation.
If the Ramazan moon is sighted on Friday, the people would be fasting on Saturday, and if there is no water, there might be a difficult situation for the people.
Meanwhile, complaints of water shortage and contaminated water supply have been received from Malir Khokhrapar No 1 area in Sectors G, 8-A and B.
Residents said that they had been facing a water shortage for the past several months and recently there had been a water contamination problem also which has forced them to purchase water from tankers at exorbitant rates.
They have demanded that water quota for entire Malir be increased as after the introduction of airport valve some years back, there had been frequent water shortages in the sprawling Malir Colony and Khokhrapar.
The Malir Tanki area either receives scant water supply or there are leakages in the pipeline which cause water shortage, the area people said.