KARACHI, Feb 10: As usual, an artificial water shortage has been created by the vested interest on the eve of Eid to give a boost to the sale of water tankers.

While residents of the water-starved areas cry for water, scores of takers can be seen on streets on major festivals.

Residents of the hard-hit areas claimed that it had often been observed that as the Eid approaches, some greedy officials of the water and sanitation department (defunct KWSB), who are hand in gloves with the tanker mafia, either tamper with valves to create an artificial shortage or deliberately choke the pipelines, supplying water to huge apartment buildings so that they could earn a hefty amount by repairing the pipelines.

On Sunday most of the tankers drawing water from Muslimabad’s two hydrants and Civic Centre’s LSR hydrant were seen making a beeline on several main thoroughfares and roads, including Sharea Quaideen, Jehangir Road, Dadabhoy Nauroji Road, Capt Fareed Bukhari Road, Sharea Faisal, main Korangi Road, Kashmir Road.

Such a heavy movement of tankers on busy thoroughfares was damaging roads and making them slippery.

Although a number of people have either lost their lives or have become maimed in the recent past in accidents involving tankers, the traffic police or the city government have, so far, failed to restrict their movement.

According to people, tanker drivers indulge in rash driving and make the roads slippery go unpunished as the officials have also failed to check the leaking nozzles of these tankers.

Residents of different affected localities said artificial water shortage during Eid and Eid-ul-Azha is usually created in those selected pockets which are inhabited by rich and upper income group people so that private tankers/private hydrants with whom they strike an under-hand deal could charge for private tanks at their whim.

In support of their contention, the residents of the affected localities claimed that it had become a permanent feature for the last couple of years that water supply position in their localities starts deteriorating on the eve of Eid and ultimately that they are left with option but to purchase private tankers at exorbitant rates.

Such a practice, according to residents, had been going on in Clifton, KDA Scheme No 1, Jinnah Cooperative Housing Society, Banglore Town, Delhi Mercantile Society, Al-Hamra Society, Mohammad Ali Society, parts of PECHS Block 2, Darul Aman Society, Adamjee Nagar and several other adjacent cooperative housing societies.

With regard to deliberate choking of supply lines of apartment buildings, insiders told Dawn that such a modus operandi is often adopted by the staff concerned prior to the Eid so that the welfare societies of the apartment buildings are compelled to get the leaking pipeline repaired for which the concerned official charges a hefty amount.

Quoting an instance, residents of Paradise Palace Apartment on Sarwar Shaheed Road said although the pipeline supplying water to their apartments had choked six days back, the W&S department cleared the pipeline on Sunday night after taking Rs 18,000 from the residents’ society on the pretext that it was an internal pipeline that had choked.

The residents claimed that the pipeline was not an internal pipeline of the building.