PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mehmood Khan has directed the public health engineering department (PHED) to take steps for the solarisation of tubewells throughout the province to address the issue of low voltages which has rendered many water supply schemes useless.

Chairing a progress review meeting about the public health engineering department`s development schemes, Mr Mahmood said a supplementary grant valuing Rs1 billion would be provided to the department on a prioritybasis to ensure the completion of 300 schemes by June 2020.

According to a statement issued here, the meeting was informed that 268 water supply schemes and 243 sanitation schemes were completed during the last year, while 14 existing and nine new tubewells were solarised.

A total of 67 water supply schemes were rehabilitated and Phase-I of sewerage scheme for Dera Ismail Khan city was completed, while work on Phase-II of sewerage scheme for DI Khan city and water supply schemes for Rehmandabad and Shakardara in Kohat is in progress.

The meeting was informed that solarisation had rehabilitated water supply schemes in Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan districts that were non-functional due to low-voltage.

A total of 600 water supply schemes were solarised to save Rs600 million and 18 megawattselectricity a year.

The meeting was informed that the water supply schemes in the province totalled 5,959 and they served 18.76 million people out of the total population of 26.64 million.

Regarding the merged districts annual development programme, 83 per cent of the released funds have been utilised, whereas master planning for the region is being made.

The officials said the residents could apply for water connection online, while the department had taken steps to replace damaged pumping machinery within 24 hours.

They also said street pavement design had been improved, while GI pipes would be replaced with HDPE and PVC ones.

The officials said the department was executing several mega projects, including water supply schemes for Shakardar and Rehmanabad from the Indus,Lawaghar Dam to Karak city and several union councils, sewerage and drainage scheme for Dera Ismail Khan, construction of Utla dam, and rehabilitation of gravity flow water supply scheme in Abbottabad.

They said eight water quality testing labs with two sub-labs and one mobile lab had been established, while eight mobile water quality testing labs were near completion.

The ofñcials said the department had signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Engineering and Technology for water quality checking and research.

They added that a water quality proñle had been preparedfor ñve districts, while the testing of samples collected from source and consumers was being carried out.

The officials said monthly reports of water quality tests were regularly produced.