Sindh govt extends contract for RO plants

KARACHI: The contract for monitoring and operations of RO plants to provide clean drinking water to the people of Thar has been extended till March 21, 2017. The Thar Coal Authority had installed 84 plants in Thar to ensure provision of clean drinking water to the people.

In June 2016, the agreement between the Sindh government and Pak Oasis had ended, which essentially focused on the monitoring and operation of these plants. Following the end of this agreement, the Sindh government had issued tenders for the maintenance of these plants as per the existing laws. This was done to ensure that a contract could be made to maintain these plants.

In the past 8 months, the Sindh government had issued tenders in newspapers for five times, but to no avail. It was noticed that no company had shown proclivity to take authority of looking after the RO plants installed in Thar as the Sindh government had not received even a single offer following the issuance of those tenders. The situation aggravated following these issues.

On the other hand, if the company looking after these plants currently would have backed out then the people of Thar would have faced acute shortage of water. According to the sources, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah took notice of this situation and called a meeting immediately in which he advised to solve this issue as soon as possible.

Following the chief minister’s orders, the Thar Coal Authority had advised the currently contracted company to continue its job. According to the sources, the Thar Coal Department should itself look after these RO plants. On the other hand, if it was unable to do so then it must draft an operation and maintenance contract as per the directives provided by the Water Commission in order to ensure smooth monitoring and maintenance of these RO plants.