— Name a cash cow in this sprawling city of ragged slums and
glass-walled office buildings and there’s sure to be an organized crime
syndicate behind it.
The illegal operations, routinely referred to as
mafias, are everywhere. There’s a land mafia that commandeers prime
real estate, a sugar mafia that conspires to control sugar prices, and
even a railway mafia that forges train tickets and pilfers locomotive
parts.
For those on the city’s bottom rung, however, the
underworld entity they revile the most is the water tanker mafia, a
network of trucking firms that teams up with corrupt bureaucrats to
turn water into liquid gold worth tens of millions of dollars each year.
The water tanker mafia’s prey can be found in slums like
Gulshan-Sikanderabad neighborhood, where every morning people buy water
from the tankers, lug the plastic jugs back to their homes on wooden
carts, then come back three or four more times in the afternoon and
evening to buy more.
A family that makes
Water scarcity isn’t the cause.
But
is also a city of opportunists forever on the prowl for under-the-table
wealth. As municipal officials look the other way, businessmen
illegally tap water mains, and use the makeshift hydrants to supply
fleets of tankers that then sell water to businesses, factories and
neighborhoods at inflated prices. As many as 272 million gallons a day
are siphoned off by the trucks.
On a recent sun-baked afternoon, along a dirt lane filled with goats munching on piles of refuse,
“We’re poor laborers — we can’t spare this much for
water,” said Khan, 27, a glass factory worker. “The water supply lines
come right into this neighborhood, but there’s never any water. So I
buy the same water that I should be getting through the pipes for free.
I’ve got no choice.”
has nine hydrant locations where water supply companies can legally buy
water and fill their tanker trucks. But scattered throughout the city
are at least 160 illegal hydrants, said
The siphoning takes place around the clock, Sagar said. It’s done in the dead of night, but also in broad daylight.
Along
bustling Karachi avenue lined with grease-covered car repair stalls and
appliance storefronts, it’s easy to find a pair of tanker drivers
standing on top of their trucks, filling up with a large blue hose from
an illegal hydrant inside a red-brick building. Armed guards keep
outsiders from meddling.
On average, a tanker fills up six times a day, Sagar
said, siphoning as much as 41 percent of the city’s daily water supply,
an amount that generates
“With this much money involved, it’s clear these are
very wealthy people,” Sagar said. “They’re powerful mafias colluding
with corrupt people in the government. So there’s really nothing
ordinary Pakistanis can do to stop it.”
the Gulshan-Sikanderabad neighborhood, said it was virtually impossible
to clamp down on an enterprise that combines the clout of city
government and the wealth of
At times, illegal hydrants are shut down by city
officials, only to be reopened a week later. Activists said they didn’t
know of anyone involved ever being arrested.
“The big reason why people don’t get the water
they’re supposed to,” Jadoon said, “is that if they did, this whole
system, the tanker mafia and this corrupt network, would shut down.”
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