Tauheed Colony residents drill underground to get water to their home. - Photo by Naushad Alam
Despite the non-payment of bills, KWSB is pressurised to supply water to these areas at all cost, for fear of strikes and riots, the source continued.
“What’s most unfortunate is that those who do pay their bills don’tget water because they are less likely to affect the law and ordersituation. The law-abiding citizen gets taken for granted.”
The latter statement is especially true due to the near ubiquitous presence of suction pumps installed by private citizens in their homes to increase water flow for their personal consumption. “Every house in Defence Housing Authority (DHA) has a suction pump,” says veteran water expert Simi Kamal. “If, as a law-abiding citizen, you don’t install one, you won’t get any water. Installing a pump in only one household will affect the water supply of the whole street.”
Ironically, an environment of (man-made) scarcity has not bred water conservation, but rather, waste. Homes in DHA and Clifton consume huge amounts of water to keep their large lawns green, and an overall absence of civic sense and accountability prevents residents from ensuring that their pipes and taps aren’t leaky. “After installing illegal suction pumps, people waste water by having huge lawns, washing their cars with a hose instead of a bucket of water and sponge, and tolerating leaky taps and commodes in their houses,” Kamal points out. “Then, they go and buy water from tankers, which is stolen water.”
According to Hisaar Foundation, an organisation which works on issues related to water and food security, one leaky toilet can waste up to 60 litres of water a day. Research by the same organisation indicates that 40 per cent of Karachi’s water is lost through leakage before consumption.
But water wastage is not restricted to DHA or Clifton, as it is prevalent across the city. It’s not uncommon to witness water gushing onto roads or tankers leaking their precious cargo onto the streets. Because water isn’t monetised, it holds no intrinsic value.
“Unless water usage is metered, unless meters are installed in everyhome and business and pricing is based on how much water is consumed,the wastage won’t stop,”
Kamal continues.
At the moment, KWSB tariffs are based on the size of the plot of land on which a home, business or institution is built. The main obstacle to metering, says the source inside the KWSB, is that municipal water supply is not constant. Unless water flows through pipes for 24 hours a day, it is difficult to use meters to quantify it.
Nevertheless, private consumers are not the only ones to blame for the Board’s financial problems. The biggest billing defaulters are various departments of the provincial government. To date, the Sindh government owes the water board 35 billion rupees, according an insider. In turn, KWSB is unable to pay its own bills. “Our electricity bill is 600 million rupees a month. We cannot pay it,” he says, which then prevents K-Electric from managing its own finances, spawning a vicious cycle of circular debt in the city.
A few years ago, when the Sindh Rangers were called in to manage KWSB’s hydrants after the board’s employees were being attacked by people protesting water shortages, the shocking extent of the water utility’s inefficiency came to light. Through a combination of greater efficiency and exorbitant prices even for water which was meant to be either free or subsidised, the Rangers made a substantial amount of money by handling only three per cent of the city’s water supply. Sources say they made anywhere between 20 billion rupees and 50 billion rupees per year from running the hydrants. “Twenty billion rupees, by my estimates,” confides the KWSB source.