KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly has been informed that Karachi is facing a water crisis of around 550 million gallons per day due to the lack of resources of the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB) to serve the city’s 25 million residents.
Responding to the lawmakers’ queries during the session’s question hour, Sindh Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah said that the KWSB could not supply more than 485 million gallons of water per day, whereas the demand for potable water in the city stood at around 1,000 million gallons per day.
Minister Shah cited the lack of a proper pipelined network in the major parts of the city as another reason for the acute water shortage.
He added that the relocation of up to 50,000 people to Karachi from other parts of the country every month had worsened the situation.
Shah also mentioned that the K-IV bulk water supply project had been stalled for two years, causing the cost of the scheme to increase manifold.
During the pre-budget discussion in the assembly, Sindh Health Minister Dr. Azra Fazal Pechuho highlighted that public healthcare facilities in the province had performed 6,085 kidney transplant operations in the past five years.
She added that some 38 million people had been vaccinated during the coronavirus emergency, while female medical practitioners and lady health workers were being trained to diagnose breast cancer.
Lawmaker of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) Sheharyar Khan Mahar criticized the performance of the Sindh irrigation department during last year’s monsoon rains
