Presiding over a meeting of Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB), Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah decided to launch a vigorous operation against water theft to ensure that Karachi’s areas facing scarcity are supplied with the life-giving resource.
“The KWSB has to improve its overall performance by ushering in the best professional practices in its entire system, right from administration to water distribution, revenue collection to enhancing revenue resources, reducing line losses to completion of its projects in time,” Shah said that KWSB is responsible for the production, transmission, and distribution of water to the people of Karachi.
“Therefore, it will have to demonstrate its professionalism in its working and services,” the CM said.
The meeting was attended by Minister Local Government Nasir Shah, Minister Labour Saeed Ghani, Administrator Karachi Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Sohail Rajput, CM Special Assistant Waqar Mehdi, Najmi Alam, Principal Secretary to CM Fayaz Jatoi, Secretary LG Najam Shah, former MD Water Board Asadullah Khan, MD Water Board, and chief engineers here at CM House on Friday.
Briefing the chief minister on system-related issues, Nasir Shah said that the overall water supply to Karachi city was around 406MGD against the demand of 1,000MGD. He added that the water distribution network outlived water system laid decades back. Giving details of available water supply, the local government minister said that KWSB took 450 MGD water from Dhabeji, 100 MGD from Hub and 30 MGD from Gharo.
“In this way, we have 580 MDG, of which 30 percent or 174 MGD goes waste because of line losses, which means 406 MGD is available for the city,” he calculated. It may be noted that 40 gallons of water per capita for 25 million population/water users of the city comes to 1000 MGD. According to Syed Nasir Shah, the last addition to the bulk water supply source was made in 2007 of 100 MGD through the K-III project.
“Power Break Down problem at Dhabeji, Gharo or Hub results in an immediate reduction in supply,” he said and added “change of land use (residential to commercial) unbalanced drawl of water from existing inventory in street/roads.”
The meeting was told that the water demand in each District/town has increased twice against the water supplied. The consumers close to water mains/pumping stations draw water of their need, but tail-enders or elevated areas consumers are not getting water for short supply. At this, the chief minister asked a cross-question from the local government minister and the waterboard team said that when there was such a huge shortage of 594 MGD in the city how people were meeting it. They replied through water tankers. At this, the CM said it meant that water was available in the system from where the tankers were supplying water to meet the demand.
