Karachi (Pakistan)

Karachi's fragile water supply took another hit on Monday for a third day straight amid power outages, piling misery on people in the scorching weather conditions, Dawn reported.

According to Dawn, the services were hit after the supply from Hub Pumping Station was suspended due to a fault in K-Electric's (KE) main cable.

Citing the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation (KWSC), it reported that the power suspension resulted in a daily water shortfall of 85 million gallons per day (MGD) for the city.

While the KWSC says the main cable fault at the Hub Pumping Station results in a shortfall of 85 MGD, KE claims power supply was restored via alternative means.

The development follows as the city continues to reel under a severe water crisis for the last two months, including over the three days of Eid al-Adha.

As per Dawn, the supply was disrupted in several parts of the city on May 30 after the KE carried out a forced shutdown at the Dhabeji Grid to urgently repair a major technical fault in the Power Transformer No. 1, and the shutdown resulted in knocking out 10 of the 21 pumping units at the Dhabeji Pumping Station, suspending water supply to several areas.

It further mentioned that the crisis escalated in the early hours of Saturday, with the outage halting K-II Pumping Station operations, disrupting supply in several parts of the city. The city faced an immediate shortfall of 54 MGD.

Despite the restoration of power, after a day-long disruption, the city had already faced a cumulative shortfall of 122 MGD.

The crisis deepened on Monday, as a fault in K-Electric's main cable suspended power to the Hub Pumping Station.

The crisis mirrors the systemic governance collapse and crumbling infrastructure in Pakistan, as Karachi has been plunged into a massive civic crisis.

As the city stands in its second consecutive month of a punishing water crisis, the severe shortage has left thousands of desperate families entirely at the mercy of expensive water tankers and unregulated private suppliers, as the government fails to provide basic necessities.

For ordinary residents in the cash-strapped nation, securing a single bucket of water has become an exhausting daily battle. Long, agonising queues for tankers, dry domestic taps, and extortionate water costs have compounded the miseries of households already crushed under Pakistan's skyrocketing inflation and economic misery.

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Dawn earlier reported that the enduring crisis, which originally began in late March, has persisted unabated due to a lethal combination of state neglect. Major pipeline leaks, repeated bursts in old transmission lines, chronic power outages at vital pumping stations, and recurrent technical faults have left the city's water supply system entirely dysfunctional, ensuring that normal water distribution remains non-existent across numerous sectors for weeks.