There is acute shortage of water in Site industrial zones of the city creating serious problems to continue industrial production which is causing delay in meeting production targets, especially in textiles. The industrial area of SITE, which is home to over 3,000 factories, is facing acute shortage of water, resulting in loss of production and closure of some units, said industrialists.
Industrialists insisted that the problem was not linked to power breakdown because industries had been facing water shortage for months. Site Association of Industry chairman Younus M Bashir said the Site industrial area requirement was 40 million gallons per day whereas it getting only 45 million gallons in a month.
In this age of international competition, the cost of production, which is already higher than our regional competitors, increases many fold if the industries buy water from the tanker mafia. The Site area is receiving water from FTM and HTM water connections with low pressure since long and the water supply position has not been improved yet despite assurances from Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB) authorities.
As per schedule KWSB is bound to supply water continuously and without any break for at lest 12 hours daily but due to the mismanagement of KWSB the supply hours have been reduced to 3-4 hours and that also with interruption of one hour with the result that the pressure of water goes down to zero and take one to two hours to build up the pressure again.
Industrialists said they were paying dues regularly to Site Limited which was responsible of managing water supply to the Site industrial area. They said the industrial production was badly affected due to the suspension or intermittent water supply by the KWSB. They added that export-oriented textile units were suffering massively as they would not be able to meet their production target and may lose export orders.