ABBOTTABAD: People in several areas of Abbottabad city have been facing shortage of drinking water for the last few days, mainly because of inefficiency of the tehsil municipal administration and Public Health Engineering Department.

The worst-affected areas are the densely populated upper and lower Kehal, Kunj, Malikpura and Abbottabad city, while the municipal authorities are not responding to the consumers’ calls for providing them drinking water despite collection of monthly charges.

One of the reasons for the water scarcity is the closure of water sources in Galyats. Whenever there is rain the muddy water started running through taps forcing the management of gravity water scheme to close supply of tap water to save the filtration plant from damage.

According to a staffer of the water supply scheme, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has been spending huge funds on provision of drinking water in Abbottabad. He said that the provincial government had released over Rs40 million to improve the water supply situation, but all the funds were wasted due to bad planning.

Huge funds have been spent on laying new water pipelines, but this could not bring improvement as all the 21 tubewells are out of order or left abandoned. Distribution of water is the responsibility of the municipality as it collects taxes, while PHED has been assigned the job to complete water-related projects.

It has been learnt that both the departments are shifting responsibility to each other and despite repeated demands no mechanism has been devised to set up a water board to resolve the problem.

The Japanese government has completed Rs4.5 billion gravity-flow water supply scheme and handed it over to the PHED, but the water crisis in the city still persists, especially during the rainy season.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2015

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