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Five most-hit tehsils may get `clean` drinking water

By Faisal Ali Ghumman 2015-09-16
LAHORE: The Punjab Saaf Pani Company (PSPC), which has been working for one-and-a-half years to `check` water contamination and provide `clean and safe` drinking water to peri-urban and rural communities of the province, is currently installing economically viable filtration plants and cluster water supply systems in five most-affected tehsils as a pilot project.

The company is expected to deliver drinking water to people in those tehsils from December 2015.

The Punjab government had earmarked Rs11 billion in the current fiscal year for the provision of clean drinking water.

While Rs1 billion has been spent on the first contract developed with the help of local and foreign consultants for project implementation in four tehsils of South Punjab -Lodhran, Minchinabad, Hasilpur and Khanpur. The second con-tract is in progress in Pattoki tehsil.

`Our priority is to cover un-served and less-served areas in current fiscal, Waseem Ajmal, the chief executive officer of the PSPC, told Dawn on Monday.

He said Punjab had been divided into eight packages while the priority was set for areas having high-level of water contamination and where people were forced to drink unhygienic and brackish water.

He said the task of ground surveys, water sampling, planning and detailed engineering design in four priority tehsils had already been completed.

Of over 900 identified locations, the construction work had been commenced on 100 locations with installation of as many filtration plants which would benefit up to 400,000 population, Mr Ajmal said.

In Pattoki, he said, the company was developing some cluster-based costeffective approaches.

`The tehsil with 1.2 million population and 192 villages has been divided into 11 large clusters with an average 17 villages in each cluster. The model project, comprising a network of water pipes, is based on comprehensive engineering andsocial surveys, supported by primary and secondary water sampling results.

He said the survey, planning and engineering design work in districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur, Layyah, Faisalabad, Nankana Sahib, Toba Tek Singh, Kasur, Okara and Sahiwal was scheduled to be finished by October this year and the construction work was likely to be completed within one year.

The worl< for rest of 22 districts would be initiated by November this year and completed within six months followed by one year for the construction, he said.

Mr Ajmal conceded that the government in the past had undertaken many interventions to provide safe water to 97 percent population, but those efforts were focused on providing only water to the community with no emphasis on the quality of water.

He said many studies by donors in the past few years had found that the aquifer (ground water sources) in Punjab -generally a sweet water zone because of rivers --had started getting polluted and badly damaged owing to discharge of industrial waste, dumping urban cities` toxic sewerage into rivers and use of fertilizers containing nitrates and otherchemicals by using flood irrigation technique by farmers.

`Even public health water supply systems, which the government had started with billions of rupees in villages, have failed to provide water fit for drinking as per the WHO standards that has led to increase in water-borne diseases.

He said hardly any filtration plant installed with billions of rupees in rural and semi-rural areas across the country during the Musharraf regime was in the working condition.

Mr Ajmal said after the Punjab Public Health Engineering Department (PBHED) `failed` to carry out detailed engineering surveys and devise a programme in a scientific manner, the chief minister decided to establish a company to carry out investigations and surveys to find the most adequate way in practice in the world.

About participation of the rural community, he said: `We are focusing on village communities so that they can organize and take ownership of drinking water distribution systems and avoid its misuse. Those communities will need to be registered at `Sahulat Centers` `With average three litre consumption per person, we need to develop a systemwhereby the community decides to distribute water from the community point as per the requirement of each household.

`We shall ensure that the democratically elected and trained village community organizations to take over the distribution in each village and adopt clusterbased approach of apex level cluster committees for a group of villages linked to only one source of water.

`Saaf Pani Tanzeems` are being formed in all villages/settlements in this regard. The company has plans to educate and create awareness among villagers through media and literature for effective use of drinking water and has hired some NGOs and social mobilization consultants for this purpose.

Mr Ajmal said a GIS-based maps system and android-based monitoring system had been developed with the help of consultants which would cover all exiting water supply systems and round-theclock monitoring of quality and quantity of water distribution.

He said a survey was also being undertaken to identify abandoned or dysfunctional schemes in rural areas to rehabilitate those with best possible solution.