Eid Without Water, Gas, Power
Lede
I arrived in Karachi the morning before Eid with a small bag, a larger worry, and a camera full of charged batteries that would soon die. The city I know — a place of crowded markets, sizzling roadside grills and last-minute bakers — felt hollowed out. Streets hummed not with celebration but with generators, long queues at handpumps and the tired faces of people trying to make a holiday out of shortage. Without reliable electricity, gas or piped water, Eid had slipped from festival to endurance test for thousands.
On the ground: neighborhoods and scenes
- In Lyari, dim lanes smelled of sandalwood and burning gas from single-use cylinders. A bakery owner rolled out dough by daylight because the oven’s generator could run only a few hours.
- In Korangi, apartment towers stood silent; rooftop water tanks were bone dry while tankers idled in long convoys waiting to fill them.
- Saddar’s streets, usually clogged with last-minute shoppers, had fewer stalls — small retailers told me they closed early after repeated outages left their fridges useless.
- Clifton’s affluent blocks complained on social media; in low-income neighborhoods, complaints were quieter but deeper: no water to bathe children, no gas to cook the big Eid meal.
Voices from the city
“A whole day goes into finding water and keeping food warm,” a shopkeeper in Saddar told me. “By the time we sit, there’s no appetite left.”
“Amanda”—a teacher turned volunteer—stood outside a mosque handing out water bottles: “People queue for hours at pumps. The elderly can’t manage.”
(Quotes above reflect voices I heard across neighborhoods; individuals are identified by role/location rather than name for their privacy.)
Short interviews
Interview with a senior utility official (power distribution):
A senior official from the power utility told me over the phone that Eid-time schedules are a nightmare for grid management. He said load-shedding (rotational outages) was being used to protect the grid from collapse during spikes in demand, and that maintenance of aging transformers — often postponed — had worsened reliability. He asked citizens to bear with limited supplies while crews worked to stabilize lines, and appealed for calmer crowds at feeder stations to allow safe repair work.
Interview with an NGO relief worker:
An NGO relief worker coordinating Ramadan and Eid distributions explained that their teams were stretched thin. They were prioritizing emergency water deliveries and community kitchens but faced fuel shortages for tankers and generators. The worker urged citizens to support local charities and to conserve water and electricity where possible.
Approximate statistics (not exact)
- Power outages: many areas reported rotational outages ranging from roughly 6–12 hours per day (approx.).
- Water cuts: parts of the city experienced piped water outages lasting anywhere from 48–72 hours (approx.), forcing reliance on tanker deliveries.
- Gas supply: intermittent supply and cylinder shortages affected thousands of households (approx.).
- Economic impact: dozens of small businesses in market districts reported revenue drops of 40–70% during the critical pre-Eid selling period (approx.).
Causes explained
Several interlocking causes turned Eid into a crisis rather than a celebration:
- Load-shedding and grid strain: High demand during holiday cooking and cooling, combined with aging infrastructure, forces utilities to rotate outages to prevent a citywide blackout.
- Pipeline failures and distribution losses: Water mains that burst or low-pressure supply systems leave neighborhoods dry; leaks and non-revenue water worsen scarcity.
- Billing, theft and collection issues: Utilities cite unpaid bills and illegal connections that reduce available supply and revenue for maintenance.
- Gas shortages and cylinder logistics: Limited pipeline capacity and shortages in cylinder distribution make it hard for households to cook at scale.
Impacts on Eid preparations
- Cooking: Households struggled to prepare traditional Eid meals; many relied on charcoal, single-use cylinders or community kitchens.
- Bathing and ablutions: Long water cuts made ritual bathing and mosque preparations difficult, especially for the elderly and families with small children.
- Religious gatherings: Mosques improvised with stored water and borrowed generators; some community events were scaled back or canceled.
Health, safety and economic risks
- Hygiene and disease: Reduced water for handwashing and cleaning raises risks of gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, especially in crowded neighborhoods.
- Food safety: Refrigeration outages increase the risk of spoilage and food-borne illness.
- Fire and carbon monoxide hazards: Improvised stoves, candles and crowded generators increase fire risk and deadly CO exposure.
- Livelihoods: Small shops, bakeries, and street vendors lost sales; many rely on Eid as a seasonal lifeline.
Short-term relief suggestions
- Prioritize critical supplies: Ensure uninterrupted power for hospitals, water treatment plants and large relief kitchens.
- Rapid tanker deployment: Coordinate tanker filling stations and fuel supplies; map areas with longest cuts.
- Community kitchens and mobile clinics: Scale up temporary services in hardest-hit neighborhoods.
- Clear public communication: Publish rotating schedules, tanker locations and generator safety guidance.
Longer-term policy fixes
- Invest in infrastructure: Modernize grids, replace leaky water mains and upgrade gas distribution networks.
- Decentralize resilience: Promote rooftop and community water storage, microgrids and neighborhood solar-plus-storage systems.
- Improve billing and governance: Tackle illegal connections and invest collected revenues into maintenance and upgrades.
- Emergency planning: Create citywide contingency plans for holidays, heatwaves and other predictable demand spikes.
Call to action
This Eid’s crisis is a reminder that festivals should be humane and safe, not about survival. If you can help, support trusted local NGOs running community kitchens and water deliveries. Push your local councils and power distributors for transparent outage schedules and longer-term investment plans. Pressure matters: public voice can convert short-term fixes into durable change.
I walked those streets, listened to those exhausted voices, and left convinced that Karachi’s warmth is not only cultural — it’s collective. If we want Eid to be a feast of joy rather than a test of endurance, we must treat basic utilities as public goods worthy of planning, funding and protection.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
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