Gulberg Town residents take to streets over water supply shortage

KARACHI: Residents of Gulberg Town, a suburb in the northern part of Karachi, took to the streets on Thursday to protest lack of water in their homes.

According to sources, a protest was held in Block 13, Federal-B area of the suburb. Residents also staged a sit-in against the city’s authorities over the lack of water supply on the highway, disrupting traffic flow.

More than 17 million people live in the country’s largest city, and chronic water shortage is extremely high. According to the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Pakistan is classified as a “water-stressed” country, with a per capita water availability of less than 1,000 cubic meters per year.

Read more: CDA expedites work to meet water shortage in capital

Meanwhile, according to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB), the city receives only about 50 per cent of its total water demand, leaving millions of residents without adequate water supply.

The rapid population growth and urbanisation in Karachi is often attributed to lack of water. The city’s infrastructure also struggles to keep up with the increasing demand for water from a growing population.

The government tried to address the issue of water theft in the city last year. In 2023, personnel from Sindh Rangers and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board Corporation initiated the second phase of their joint operation to combat illegal water theft.

Illegally-installed connections, motors and pumps were dismantled. The operation was to prevent a monthly loss of approximately Rs300 million to the national exchequer.

In one such case, under the jurisdiction of the police in Jamshed Town, the operation restored a daily supply of four million gallons of water.

Karachi’s water board estimated last year that an annual water theft of around Rs2 billion occurs in the city.