Due to lack of supervision by the Capital Development Authority, taps of filtration plants have gone missing since long, irking citizens on the federal capital.
Mehboob, a resident of G-6/1 said, “The water filtration plant in our area is not being used as it does not have taps. It’s only a few meters away from my home but I cannot use it. No one is supervising this plant, neither the CDA nor the contractors”.
He added that once a CDA supervisor visited and handed over the keys of the filtration plant to a cobbler who worked under a water tank nearby.
“He authorized me to turn on the plant on a specific time which I did it for a long time. But I do not do this anymore,” the cobbler, Sultan said.
The water filtration plant in I-10/2 is also dysfunctional.
“I have never used it. It’s out of order since long and we are using another one installed by an NGO,” a resident of I-10/2 said.
CDA Water Production Deputy Director Malik Ikhlaq Hussain told Pakistan Today that some plants had been closed only for today as CDA was changing the filtration medium.
“We change the filter medium after almost every four to five months to supply better water to citizens,” he added.
He further said, “Every water plant is installed on the basis of public demand. Wherever the public representatives wanted, we installed a plant. However, the one located on Chambeli road in Sector I-10 was installed on a wrong location. Only that plant is dysfunctional,” he said.
He added that CDA had installed 37 water filtration plants in the city at a cost of a Rs 1.2 million each.
“We auctioned the contract for the management of a filtration plant because it lessened the financial burden on CDA. We would have had to employ three people a day on a single filtration plant; the contractors on the other hand can manage it at a much lesser cost,” he said.
An employee of CDA water department told Pakistan Today on the condition of anonymity that almost all plants were located near water tanks of CDA and the staff of these tanks could easily handle these filtration plants along with their other duties.
“But the officers auctioned it to a private contractor which is not doing its job properly,” he said.