Last week­end, moth­ers in some ar­eas of Ari­ma got a Moth­er's Day sur­prise that wasn't re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed.At ex­act­ly 10 am on Sun­day, we were shocked to see there was no wa­ter flow­ing through the taps. What a dis­ap­point­ment.Moth­ers and oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly who were in the process of prepar­ing meals and do­ing their oth­er chores were dis­tressed and in­con­ve­nienced for the rest of the day.

For sev­er­al years we have been vic­tims of this un­fair treat­ment but we had grown ac­cus­tomed to the rou­tine which has be­come pre­dictable.On most pub­lic hol­i­days and re­li­gious hol­i­days–Eid ul Fitr, Good Fri­day, Di­vali and Cor­pus Christi we en­dure an ir­reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply, much to our dis­gust.In ad­di­tion to pay­ing wa­ter rates, house­hold­ers have had to in­vest in ex­pen­sive sys­tems in­clud­ing pumps, tanks and fil­ters (due to the poor qual­i­ty dur­ing the rainy sea­son).

The poor, chil­dren and the aged suf­fer the most and the av­er­age res­i­dent, with­out fail, has to have wa­ter stored in bar­rels, buck­ets etc, so they could be pre­pared just in case "wa­ter goes".We are all at risk as health haz­ards are sure to af­fect us due to im­prop­er or in­se­cure stor­age of wa­ter.It was with some mea­sure of re­lief that house­hold­ers be­gan to en­joy an im­prove­ment in the wa­ter sup­ply with­in the last three years, but on­ly re­cent­ly this sit­u­a­tion has be­gun to rear its ug­ly head.

We be­lieve that the au­thor­i­ties can reg­u­larise this sit­u­a­tion to bring re­lief to all the burgess­es who are af­fect­ed. We look for­ward to an ear­ly re­sponse.

El­ma Ram­sumair,

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