The houses located in Phase-VIII of Defence Housing Authority (DHA) Karachi, do not have access to piped water supply and are solely dependent on 'bowzers', (mini tank trucks) of Cantonment Board Clifton, (CBC), for their need of potable water, supplied twice a week from CBC's water hydrant, located off Khayaban-e-Ittehad/Khayaban-e-Muslim.
CBC issues monthly water supply coupons to each of the consumer, with specified dates. The driver of the bowzer is supposed to collect the coupon from the consumer after having delivered the bowzerload of water.
The above CBC water hydrant has been taken over by the bowzer drivers, who instead of delivering the water to the bona fide consumers, sell the water to anyone who is willing to pay a couple of hundreds of rupees, either for an out-of-turn supply or just to ensure he or she receives water regularly.
Residents, who refuse to bribe the bowzer drivers, either lose a specified day's water supply or have to wait for the next designated day's load, which could also be not supplied. The fact of the matter is that water from this CBC hydrant is blatantly stolen and illegally sold, at a price, unchecked.
Repeated complaints by the residents are simply ignored and not heeded to by the CBC staff. A simple exercise of 'material balance' ie, reconciliation of supplies with the receipts and an audit of matching the dispatches with the collected coupons, would establish the fact that water from the hydrant is sold illegally.
If an audit, as suggested above, is carried out by the office of the Station Commander, Karachi, which is supposed to oversee and supervise the CBC establishment and its function, just for the current month of August, would reveal the truth and establish the "illegal" sale of water from this hydrant by the staff members of CBC. It is requested of the Station Commander, Karachi to immediately look into this activity being carried out at the above CBC hydrant and to investigate the matter, initiate an impartial inquiry into the matter.