Following the tradition of its predecessors, the incumbent civic management continues to hoodwink citizens of federal capital as it again came up with tall claims to resolve the decades old issue of water scarcity during Ramazan, though; there is still no strategy in place to provide relief to the citizens during the upcoming holy month.
The residents of Islamabad have to face water scarcity yet again in the coming Ramzan.
On March 29, the Mayor cum Chairman Capital Development Authority (CDA) Sheikh Anser Aziz along with the State Minister for Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhary in a press conference promised citizens to resolve the longstanding water issue in one week. Then a special budget of Rs50 million was also allocated to mend the leaked water lines, repair water tankers and tube wells.
However, the situation of water scarcity remained the same and it speaks volume of the performance of civic management.
Opposition Leader Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) Ali Awan spoke to Pakistan Today and said that all announced strategies and special budget were fraud. He said that the mayor lied to his constituency just because the ruling party was criticised in the PTI’s staged protest over the said matter.
The civic agency through all means is only providing one-third of required water to the residents of Islamabad, which is not enough to fulfill the basic necessities.
In a meeting held at CDA headquarter here on Tuesday, CDA Chief Anser Aziz said that determined efforts were underway to get water supply from Ghazi Barotha to end scarcity from Islamabad for the good of residents.
“While apprising the situation of water being supplied from different reservoirs, the meeting was briefed that water supplied from Simly Dam during the month of April was 720 million gallon, 36 from Korang, 21 from Saidpur, 15 from Noorpur, 36 from Shahdara, 229.74 from the tube wells in (I & H) series, 89.5 from Pona Faqiran and 210 million gallon from Khanpur Dam,” say the press release.
During the meeting, a detailed briefing was given by water supply directorate about the supply of water to the city through water tankers. Directorate of water supply briefed that during the month of April, 10,574 water supply related complaints were addressed by supply of water through water tankers in houses in different areas of Islamabad.
Meeting was further briefed that due to climatic changes, less rainfall was experienced during the current year which resulted in abnormal decrease of water level in different water reservoirs. Similarly decrease of 20 – 25 meters in the underground water level has also been noticed. Due to these reasons water supply in the city is disturbed.
It is worthy to mention here that the MCI has failed to fix 46 out-of-order tube wells, and the CADD minister and mayor promised to revamp them in one week in March. So far, the civic authority in a meeting revealed that tender for 44 abandoned tube wells has been called through press and after fulfillment of all formalities, work will be stated on it to improve supply of potable water to the residents of city.
Similarly, 22 tenders of maintenance works related to various water works/sumps were also invited and practical work is in progress. Moreover, repair / maintenance of leakages and disconnection of illegal connection are also in process.
“Presently, water tankers fleet is fully operational with complaint attending ratio of 500 to 550 on daily basis. It was also informed during the meeting that the maintenance work of 37 water filtration plants has been awarded to the contractor,” reads CDA press release.
