KWSB can barely fulfil 45 per cent of city’s water requirement, says Wahab

The quantity of bulk water which is available to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) is barely sufficient to fulfil 45 per cent of the water requirement of Karachi.

Adviser to the Sindh Chief Minister on Law and Information Barrister Murtaza Wahab said this on Thursday while addressing a news conference at the Sindh Assembly building. At present, the water requirement of Karachi was 1,100 MDG but the KWSB had only 570 MGD available, Wahab said.

He said the Sindh government had filed an application with the federal government three years ago to increase the water quota for Karachi by 650 million gallons per day (MGD) but the application had been pending since then.

He added that the application was once more sent to the federal government after Prime Minister Imran Khan won general elections from Karachi last year. He said the Sindh government had convened a meeting of the stakeholders on Friday (today) to evolve a strategy to resolve major civic issues of Karachi, including the problem of water shortage.

He said invitations had been extended to industrialists, businessmen, and representatives of political and religious organisations to attend the meeting. According to Wahab, the provincial government could not resolve the major civic issues of Karachi alone and it required cooperation of the stakeholders concerned for the purpose.

He expressed his hope that representatives of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf would also attend the meeting after putting aside their differences with the Pakistan Peoples Party because the two political parties had a stake in the city.

The information adviser said the Sindh government was willing to sit with the Karachi mayor for the sake of resolving the civic problems of the city. The Sindh government had lately taken certain decisions to tackle the issues of public transport and unattended municipal waste in the city and positive impacts of these decisions would hopefully be seen soon, he said.

Wahab said the Sindh government wanted to ensure sustainable development of Karachi and it had started consultations with the stakeholders for that. He said one of the options to resolve the water problem of Karachi was to install a seawater desalination plant but for that a sovereign guarantee and availability of natural gas were to be ensured by the federal government.