CM’s rapid bus project leaves citizens thirsting for water

Residents of Ichhra, Samanabad, Rehmanpura and Shama have been facing serious problems related to water supply owing mainly to the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) project that is underway on Ferozepur Road.
Residents complained that water supply remains disconnected most of the time.
In Ichhra, the situation is worse where supply has not been restored since the month of Ramadan.
“There are no men in my house and I have to go fetch water from my neighborhood mosque myself,” said Haneefa, a 56-year-old widow, adding that the government should have made a better plan.
Other residents and traders from Ichhra voiced similar complaints. They said that even though they had filed many complaints regarding the issue, not a single government official or the area’s public representatives had visited the area.
“We have been running from pillar to post to get our water woes registered with the authorities concerned but all our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. The WASA officials blame the bus project for frequent suspension of water and say they are helpless because it is the chief minister’s own project,” said Sheikh Ahmed, a resident of Shahdin Scheme area of Ichhra.
Sajid Malik, a resident of Rehmanpura, added to the list of complaints when he told Pakistan Today that his area often received water that was contaminated with sewage water.
He said that they had approached MPA Hafiz Mian Nauman regarding the issue whose only effort was providing a single water tank for the area but even that tank was providing polluted water.
Another resident of Rehmanpura, Khalid Raza, told Pakistan Today that the water pipes supplying water to his area were connected to the main pipe from the opposite end. As a result when water was full in all other pipes, it flowed back towards the pipe supplying to his area. “If the other pipes are not full, we don’t get water,” he said, adding that it meant his area got water only from 10pm to midnight during 24 hours. He added that polluted water was causing serious diseases like cholera.
Raza also criticized the role of MPA Mian Nauman. “There has been zero effort on Mian Nauman’s part to do something about this serious situation. Only if our MPA lived in his constituency he would know the misery of living without water,” he said.
An engineer from the Al Barka Construction Company that was given the contract for the BRTS told Pakistan Today on the condition of anonymity that it was the responsibility of WASA officials to provide them a map of the underground water pipes.
“We carried out drilling according to our plan, how were we supposed to know the exact location of the water pipes?” he said.
“The authorities want the BRTS completed on time and that is the main focus right now. These side issues can wait for later,” said a WASA engineer, adding that the officials had been barred from talking to the press.
“The Punjab government did not make a backup plan for such crisis situation and since BRTS was being flashed all over the media, nobody is ready to take care of these side issues,” he said. “It is a trade off. Elections are near and the government has to finish this project to increase its vote bank.”
WASA Ichhra Sub-Division sources said that the SDO had even registered a formal complaint with the Ichhra Police Station against the project contractors for damaging WASA pipelines but no action has been taken so far.
They said that the WASA officials were trying their best to mitigate the suffering of the residents but frequent damaging of the WASA water pipelines was worsening the situation.
Pakistan Today made repeated attempts to contact MPA Mian Nauman but each time his secretary refused to put the call through to him.