In order to provide citizens with clean water, Pharmagen Healthcare Limited has set up water shops in the city, in collaboration with Acumen Fund Pakistan, where clean water is being provided at Rs 1.5 per litre, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Parvez Sufi, managing director of a commercial firm Pharmagen Healthcare Limited said that Lahore, with a population of around 10 million, was being provided contaminated water by the state run water supply schemes. Sufi said that the water at these shops was clean according to healthcare standards and that the company had set up 17 water shops in various areas of the city including Shahdara, Data Darbar and Railway Station.
Sufi plans to expand the initiative to other parts of the city as well. He said that tap water was the primary source of drinking water in urban cities and 40 percent of the total illnesses were caused by contaminated water, killing over 200,000 children every year who suffer diarrhea alone. The company started to purify water for low-income communities through reverse osmosis (RO) and UV filtration, he added.
Sufi said that his firm worked like an NGO for the betterment of the poor and that people were being charged for the clean water because the execution of the RO and UV filtration processes required funds which made the sale of water necessary. He said that he wanted communities to get involved in the project in order to sustain it and so charging money did not seem like a bad idea as the government charged the citizens for water as well.
Sufi said that although his company could not be equated with the government, his vision was to help the government in providing citizens with clean water. He said that currently the RO plants in his company were purifying 80 liters of water a day, which catered to 1 percent of the total population of the city. Acumen Fund Senior Associate Business Development Sadaf Rehman said that the Acumen Fund had bought some of the company’s shares to help in the establishment of the water shops.
Water shops set up for provision of clean water
