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Acute water shortage in cantonment areas

* Rawalpindi Cantonment Board says impossible to entertain all complaints on daily basis

By Aamir Yasin

RAWALPINDI: The residents of Rawalpindi cantonment areas are facing acute water shortage but the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) is paying little attention to solve the problem.

The worst affected areas are Tench Bhata, Bakra Mandi, Allahabad, Gulshan-e-Nayyab, Chak Madad Khan, Habib Colony, Sultanabad, Dhoke Banaras, Gulistan Colony, Chur Harpal and Siham. Tubewells in these thickly populated localities are not enough to meet water requirements.

The crisis is gradually gripping the whole cantonment area. According to the residents, the situation will worsen in the summer season and the civic body should adopt an effective strategy to cope with the situation.

Complaints: The RCB sources told Daily Times that around 100 water shortage complaints were being received daily but only 20 of them were attended. “It is impossible for the RCB to entertain all complaints in a day as we have to provide water to other areas also,” they added.

They said Rs 2.4 million were allocated to the RCB last year by the previous Punjab government for the installation of four tubewells in Chak Madad Khan, Habib Colony and Sultanabad, but the RCB could not install tubewells so far.

“We are not receiving regular water supply and have registered several unattended complaints to the RCB,” said Muhammad Irshad, a resident of Sultanabad. He said the water shortage had made life of the people miserable.

Muhammad Nisar, a Gulshan-e-Nayyab resident, said the RCB had laid pipelines in their locality but water supply was not regular. He said when contacted the RCB officials said the supply would be regularised soon. Talking to Daily Times, the RCB officials said the civic body was striving hard to ensure availability of water in every locality. It was impossible to supply water through tubewells to areas like Habib Colony, Chak Madad and Gulshan-e-Nayyab because of their difficult terrain, they maintained.

They said water table was falling rapidly so different options were under consideration to improve water supply system in the cantonment areas. “There are some localities, which needed water supply through dams,” they said.

The RCB, they added, was working on a project to install a new tubewell at Sultanabad, which would start working within few days and the situation would improve very soon.

They said the RCB would initiate new projects during next fiscal year 2008-09 to improve water supply network in different localities.

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