Karachi on the brink of water riots, warns MQM

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) on Saturday warned the Sindh Assembly that water riots can break out any day in Karachi because of the unfair distribution system and the acute water shortage in the metropolis.

The warning came as Kanwar Naveed Jameel, the MQM-P’s parliamentary party leader in the provincial assembly, participated in the general discussion for the sixth consecutive day on the new Sindh government budget for the remaining nine months of the current financial year.

Jameel said the water situation in the city can be improved by ensuring just distribution. He suggested that the city can be divided into two, with each of them receiving water from the available bulk supply every alternative day.

He expressed gratitude to the water commission due to which certain potable water projects for Karachi and Hyderabad could be included in the provincial budget.

He said tanker services are being used in Karachi to provide water to notables belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). He claimed that each year Rs500 billion is spent to purchase water in the city.

The MQM-P lawmaker said the K-IV bulk water supply project for Karachi is yet to be completed despite the fact that it was approved in 2004 and its work was started in 2013.

He said the city accounts for 90 per cent of the 247-billion-rupee revenue that is annually generated for the national exchequer. He claimed that certain important projects meant for the city have been deleted from the provincial budget.

Jameel said that majority of the public schools lack basic facilities, forcing people to send their children to private institutions. He urged the government to spend a sizable portion of the budget on Karachi so that the city does not give the impression of being treated as a colony to outsiders.

He said the new budget includes Rs35 billion for the district annual development programme, fearing that the least of it would be spent on the six districts of Karachi while most on the rest of Sindh’s districts.

PA opposition leader Firdous Shamim Naqvi of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) criticised the provincial administration’s performance, saying that it does not even know the exact number of luxury motor vehicles in its fleet.

Naqvi said the government has failed to build a solid waste disposal system for Karachi, adding that Sindh’s budget does not mention the city’s public transportation and bulk water requirements. He said that compared to other provinces, Sindh lags behind in development.

Haleem Adil Shaikh, the PTI’s parliamentary party leader in the PA, advised Sindh’s chief minister to ensure the arrest and incarceration of the industrialists responsible for unchecked discharge of industrial effluents into reservoirs meant for drinking water.

Shaikh said that on the pattern of Thar and Kohistan, the provincial administration should declare District Malir’s rural parts calamity-hit due to severe droughts there. He said the people are forced to consume water mixed with sewage.

He said that majority of the reverse-osmosis plants installed in Thar have been shut down after becoming defective, including the one inaugurated by the previous PPP government

with the claim that it is Asia’s biggest RO plant. He said District Umerkot has no district-level hospital, while majority of the hospitals in Thar lack incubators and ambulances.

Responding to the opposition’s allegations, PPP-backed Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani said the provincial government is working on 204 development schemes in Karachi, for which Rs44.5 billion has been allocated this financial year.

Ghani said the government has provided Rs192.5 billion to all the municipal agencies of the city in the past decade as their due share under the Octroi Zila Tax (OZT). He said the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation was given Rs37 billion under the OZT and Rs72 billion more as grant.

He said work on new water supply schemes of 100mgd and 65mgd for Karachi is under way, claiming that the former project would be completed by February or March and the latter by the end of 2019.

The LG minister clarified that the K-IV project’s cost was increased mainly because its PC-1 was prepared in 2010 showing Rs25.5 billion as the initial estimate, adding that the actual work started in 2016, by which time the cost of land and other components had increased manifold.

He said that a portion of the S-III sewage treatment project has already started functioning and is treating 72mgd of effluents, adding that its capacity would be increased to 150mgd by next year.