Water plan hits snags

Mohsin Babbar

The government’s multibillion rupees project to provide ‘Clean Drinking Water for All’ (CDWA) across Pakistan by year 2007, is facing severe financial and administrative crisis these days as the Finance Ministry has yet to disburse an installment of Rs 200 million for the first quarter.And even staff of the CDWA project has not been paid salaries for two months, official sources in the finance ministry told The Post Tuesday. Sources further said project’s first Project Manager Col Islamul Haq had also left his job within 40 days of his appointment.“The project manager tendered his resignation due to personal reasons. But in fact, he left the job after his bosses refused to grant a 14-day leave to him for completing a PhD thesis,” sources said. The Rs 6.5billion CDWA project was initiated during the current fiscal year to install 6,035 water filtration plants in all Union Councils (UC) of the country by 2007.But the project is unlikely to be completed within the stipulated time because work on it is under way at snail’s pace. “Making 6,035 filtration plants operational within two years seems simply impossible”, sources believed. “If the government wanted to complete the project in time, around 1,250 filtration plants would have been installed by the end of October. But unfortunately the work on the installation of only 80 plants was under way when October ended,” sources said.Sources said the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (PEPA) was the main execution agency of the Rs 6.5 billion project and it had signed agreements with 134 tehsils for installing 563 filtration plants with respective district administrations until now. The CDWA programme has been prepared and is being supervised by the environment ministry. The PEPA is executing the project, the science and technology ministry is monitoring water quality and two private companies namely, So Safe and Rain Drop Echo, are installing filtration plants.The indigenously funded project will cost Rs 2.5 billion during the current financial year and rest of the Rs 4 billion would be consumed in the next financial year. The CDWA programme is aimed at providing clean and safe drinking water to 100 per cent population of the country by the year 2007. According to the programme, companies will install these filtration plants on turnkey basis for the period of three years, while the same would be handed over to the local governments thereafter. These filtration plants will provide 2,000 gallons of water per hour by running eight hours on daily basis.Sources said the filtered water would cost three paisa per litre and would be provided free of cost to the people.According to the agreement, tehsil administrations are asked to allocate space of 12 x 12 feet for housing of filtration plants, a water supply connection, and necessary arrangements for the provision of electric connection in each UC. The responsibility to monitor water quality is with the ministry of science and technology that will analyse the water samples after every six months.The location identification job has been given to a PMC, chaired by provincial secretaries of the local government with project manager and one representative each from WASA, Public Health Department, Provincial Planning and Development Department and District Government Hospitals as members.

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