Sep 23, 2008

Sindh: Clean Water Project is Too Slow


Sample ImageThe Sindh government is dissatisfied with the progress on the federally funded project.

Below is an article published by the The Daily Times:

The Sindh government has shown dissatisfaction on progress on the federal government project titled “Clean Drinking Water for All (CDWA)”, under which the authorities concerned were to install 1,108 water purification plants throughout Sindh.
 
Sindh Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Development Nazar Hussain Maher commented on the slow progress while chairing a meeting of the project steering committee on Monday [22 September 2008].
 
Under this federally funded project, water purification plants with capacities of 2,000 or 4,000 liters per hour were to be installed in each union council of the province. According to an official handout, only 61 plants out of 1,108 have been energized, and 10 made operational. These include eight in Sukkur, one in Hyderabad and one in Karachi.

Maher expressed displeasure over slow progress on installation of these plants and the provision of water, electricity and sewerage connections. He urged the KWSB, HESCO and KESC representatives, the chief engineer for public health engineering and the project contractor, GP-BIDC (Pvt) Ltd, to speed up installation of the plants in Sindh in the larger interest of the poor people, who are the real beneficiaries of the project, which is intended to supply drinking water.

All stakeholders promised to take dedicated and coordinated efforts to bring all possible improvements to make progress satisfactory. It was also decided that the contractor would install 300 plants in the next one month.

In all, 178 plants will be installed in Karachi, 52 in Hyderabad, 46 in Badin, 55 in Thatta, 16 in Tando Muhammad Khan, 19 in Matiari, 28 in Jamshoro, 41 in Mirpurkhas, 19 in Tando Allahyar, 44 in Tharparkar, 55 in Sanghar, 27 in Umerkot, 46 in Sukkur, 76 in Khairpur, 51 in Nawabshah, 51 in Noshero Feroze, 40 in Ghotki, 44 in Larkana, 40 in Kambar-Shahdadkot, 37 in Kashmore, 52 in Dadu, 40 in Jacobabad and 51 in Shikarpur.

This matter was also discussed at the secretaries’ committee meeting held on Saturday [20 September 2008], chaired by Sindh Chief Secretary Sindh Fazlur Rehman. It was decided that the District Coordination Officers (DCOs) will activate their District Implementation Committees (DICs) and play an active role in the proper and timely implementation of the CDWA Project in Sindh.