News
Monday, March 15, 2010
Water ‘more for profit’ than life in city
KARACHI: Environmentalists, nature conversationalists and different NGOs celebrated the International Day of Action for Rivers on Sunday under the slogan of ‘water for life, not for profit’. However, one of the worst examples of water, a necessity of life, becoming a business can be found in Karachi, where owners of illegal water tankers steal around 40 percent of the city’s total water. Owing to these illegal activities, 42 percent of the population living in 539 slum settlements of the city faces an acute shortage of potable water. This scribe visited the colony spread on the southern side of the railway track throughout the city that known by different names at different locations. Like other slum settlements of the city, the residents of this colony have somehow managed to acquire basic facilities such as gas connections, sanitation system and drinking water, but officially they are not allowed these facilities since they live in an illegal settlement. Walking pass the piles of rubbish with children playing around them, this scribe came across some residents who spoke about the problems facing the colony. “Most residents of this colony use underground water for drinking and other purposes, as we still haven’t received legal connections from the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB),” said a resident of the colony. The residents of Machhar colony, the biggest slum of the city with around 700,000 people of different nationalities including Afghans, Bangladeshis, Biharis and Burmese and others living in it also had similar complaints. There is not a single water connection provided by the KWSB to such huge colony and residents have connected pipes to the main water pipeline that pass through a large nullah. Even though, a large portion of the city’s population is suffering from the lack of water supply schemes, water tanker owners illegally siphon the city’s 40 percent water from hydrants that is around 242m gallons. These illegal activities are also resulting in a loss worth Rs 50bn annually to the KWSB. amar guriro
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk