It is quite surprising that the government could not provide enough water to the residents of the federal capital what to talk of the rest of the country.
The metropolitan is currently facing acute water shortage, as the water level is rapidly going down due to which the people are passing through great ordeal amid hot summer.
Pakistan started off as a water affluent country in 1947, with per capita availability of renewable water at more than 5,000 cubic meters, but now it is on the verge of becoming water stressed, with per capita availability down to almost 1,000 cubic meters.
An official said that the water issue mainly caused by the mismanagement of MCI’s administration, because dozens of tub-wells in the city were not functional because the MCI has failed to fix the faulty tube wells.
He said that the authority instead of improving the water supply to different sectors through management, the MCI was supplying water to posh areas and the residents at the periphery were passing through great ordeal due to water shortage.
Like dwellers of I-8, I-9, I-10, G-9, 10 and 11, the residents of Bhara Kahu are facing the same problem where dozens of borings have dried.
Against the demand of 211MGD water daily, the MCI is providing only 55 to 65MGD water and this gap is increasing with each passing day.
The official said that how the water issue could be solved when there were more than 6674 illegal water connections in Islamabad.
The Simly Dam has the capacity to provide 39 million gallon water per day, but only providing 25 million gallon and Khanpur Dam has the capacity to provide 16 million gallon water per day but only providing 8 million as two out of three foreign-made motors are not functional since 2002. He said that civic body has completely failed to iron out this crisis efficiently despite having a huge budget.
Zahid, a resident of Bhara Kahu, said it was quite astonishing that people of the area were struggling to get drinking water while the government seemed not interested in addressing the issue.
He said that the water crisis in Islamabad was becoming a hot issue for the election campaigns, as local leadership of two main opposition parties Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) have already started grilling the government and civic bodies for their failure to ensure sufficient supply of water to residents of the federal capital.
After PTI protest rally led by the party local MNA Asad Umar on the issue, State Minister for Capital Administration and Development Division (CA&DD) Tariq Fazal Chaudhry prompted into action and announced Rs 50 million budget for rehabilitation of 60 dysfunctional tube wells as well as repairing of leaked water lines from the Simli Dam.
He admitted that there was shortage of 17 million gallons of water. The capital’s requirement of water was 70 million gallon but supply was 53 million gallon.
A senior MCI official viewed that there was no immediate solution to completely overcome the water shortage within the available resources.
He said that this decline in the water table was not only due to the drought conditions but also because of the increasing demand.
To a question about Rs 50 million budget announced by Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, he said that it was a political statement as nothing could be made in this regard and the issue was getting severe with each passing day instead.
Recent study conducted by NESPAK indicated that there was around 33pc loss of water in the domestic water supply system. The major loss was associated due to leaked pipelines, breakage and faulty control systems (valves etc) and other losses. These losses may increase in future and thus efforts were needed for developing operational management plans for supply of water to the residents of Islamabad.