As Lyari goes dry, residents point fingers at PPP

Many areas of the city’s oldest neighbourhood have not received a single drop of water for the last month

KARACHI: Water supply to Hingorabad and its adjacent localities in Lyari - the city’s oldest neighbourhood - has been completely stopped for the last one month. Residents believe the water shortage is by design. That it’s ‘political victimisation’ by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Every day, women, children and elderly people can be seen carrying containers to fetch potable water from far-flung areas. Smaller tankers provide water to families that can afford its cost -  Rs1,000 for 700 litres once a week.

Déjà vu

Lyari’s residents are no strangers to the difficulties associated with water crises. Last year, the residents had hurled stones at the convoy of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who had visited the area to canvass for the general elections. Bilawal was contesting for the National Assembly seat from the constituency — considered a stronghold of the party.



“No doubt we are being punished for that protest,” recalled an elderly woman, Zulekha Ghani. “I have to beg for it [water],” she said, adding that she spent the better part of her day fetching water to drink and for household chores. “We haven’t had water in our taps for the last 28 days.”

Shahbaz Ahmed, who along with two other children, was carrying 10 litre water bottles on his shoulders, told The Express Tribune that he had barely managed to obtain some water from Rahimabad. “People are rude to us when we ask them for water and my mother says I have to bring back water in the bottles,” he added.

A years-long ordeal

Most areas of Lyari have been facing an acute shortage of water for the last several years. In his last public gathering at Kakri Ground in April 2015, former president Asif Ali Zardari, acknowledging the severity of the water crisis in an area that the PPP leadership has always claimed to be its ‘second home’, pledged that the crisis would be resolved within three months.

“The PPP always deceives us,” said a former PPP worker and resident of Hingorabad, Saleh Mohammad. “Our protest before Bilawal was for water but we were declared ‘gangsters’,” he lamented. “They called us gangsters for demanding water!” he exclaimed.

Saleh went on to say that most politicians made promises when they needed votes. “It’s a political issue now. PPP is responsible [for water shortage] and is targeting us as we protested and cast our votes against its wishes,” he added.

A PPP worker, who asked not to be named, confirmed to The Express Tribune that the PPP’s local leadership was deliberately creating a water crisis in Lyari. “It’s water politics,” he said summarily.

The party worker alleged that PPP’s Karachi’s General Secretary and former member of Sindh Assembly from Lyari, Javed Nagori, was behind the current water crisis in five Union Committees (UCs). “He wants to remind people of his clout and influence,” he said, claiming that other leaders, including South District Municipal Corporation Chairman Malik Fayaz and PPP South president, Khalil Hoot, were trying to misguide the party’s top leadership on basic issues of the locality such as water and sewerage.

Refuting allegations

Denying the allegations leveled against him, Nagori said that all PPP leaders in Lyari were on the same page. “We want to serve the people. Lyari always supports the PPP,” he said. “We have provided water to the area where residents attacked the PPP rally.”

He admitted, however, that there was a water crisis in the area, but blamed it on various ‘mafias’ that were “behind the artificial water crisis in the area that ultimately added to the miseries of the common man”.



According to Nagori, water and sewerage were some of the basic issues that residents of the old city area have been facing for a long time. “Some invisible forces exploit this situation,” he alleged, refusing to divulge who he was referring to.

Shazia Karim Sanghar, the only PPP lawmaker from Lyari, who has been given a reserved seat in the current assembly, also admitted that a severe water crisis persisted in several localities of Lyari. “It’s an artificial issue,” she confirmed to The Express Tribune. She said that Lyari’s water was being diverted to District West.

Sanghar was of the view that the PPP leaders have not been allowed to resolve the genuine and basic issues of Lyari. “We have a resolve to bring water back to those who are suffering,” she added.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2019.