Islamabad: The issue of non availability of clean and safe drinking water was echoed in the National Assembly on Wednesday as the Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal informed the House that existing water supply lines in the federal capital will be replaced soon as Rs400 million has been allocated for the purpose.
The female parliamentarians including Khalida Mansoor, Shakila Luqman and Zeb Jaffar raised the issue on a calling attention notice regarding non-supply of clean drinking water to the residents of Islamabad, especially in sectors I-10, G-6 and G-7.
They said that clean drinking was not available in the city like Islamabad particularly in these two sectors resulting in spread of many diseases in the capital. They said that due to dry weather, the level of water in Islamabad had also gone down.
The parliamentarians called upon the Interior Minister to take notice of the situation and order remedial measures. Ahsan Iqbal said that Rs400 million have been allocated to replace of water-pipes in the capital as existing water supply lines in the federal capital lines are damaged and wasting huge amount of water.
He said that a project costing Rs66 billion has been prepared to bring water from Indus River to Islamabad to meet the growing water requirements of the capital. He said work on this project will start this year. He said China has been requested to provide finances for the project under the CPEC.
He said presently the total demand of water of the federal capital is 120 million gallon while the capital had only 56 million gallon water the available resources. He said that out of 35 tubewells in federal capital, 15 are out of order and work is under way to make operational these tubewells.