SHC tells water board to check illegal hydrant

SHC directs Karachi Water and Sewerage Board to ensure unfit drinking water should not be sold by water hydrants.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court directed the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board Friday to ensure that unfit drinking water should not be sold by water hydrants, including an illegally built hydrant, in Sharafi Goth.

A division bench headed by Justice Amir Hani Muslim also ordered the KW&SB MD to obtain water samples from the hydrant and send them for testing to the Aga Khan University Hospital. Petitioner Vishal Baloch had gone to court alleging harassment at the hands of water board staff and Sharafi Goth police. His counsel, Abdul Jabbar Korai, submitted that the petitioner was allotted 16 acres of agricultural land by the deputy commissioner in 1992. The land now falls in the limits of Sharafi Goth police station.

He stated that the agricultural land had turned barren due to a scarcity of water, therefore, the petitioner had installed a water pump for his personal use. But a team from the KW&SB and police officials demolished the pumping station, alleging that he was running an illegal water hydrant. He alleged that the police also took away his brother, Nazir Ahmed, who was illegally detained for many days.

The counsel prayed the court to declare the action taken by the official respondents as illegal and issue orders to restrain them from harassing the petitioner. On Friday, SHO Mazhar Saeed informed the court that the petitioner’s brother Nazir Ahmed was not in their custody. The SHO stated that petitioner was illegally running a hydrant and supplying water not fit for human consumption to different factories as a business. After hearing the arguments, the SHC bench ordered: “In [the] first place, we directed [the KW&SB] to ensure that [the] petitioner or any other should not be allowed to commercially supply water to factories or any other organisation. [The KW&SB] shall take samples of [the] water from [the] aforesaid hydrant ... and send [it] to Aga Khan University, Karachi, to verify and report as to whether this water is fit for human consumption or not. This report should reach this Court within 15 days from today.”

Adjourning the hearing to October 20, the bench ordered that in the intervening period, the SHO shall ensure that the petitioner, except for his personal use, shall not supply water on a commercial basis to any factory in the locality.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2010.