Governor calls for desalination of sea water to overcome water shortage

Sindh Governor Mohammad Zubair has said that there is a need to desalinate sea water in order to effectively overcome the ever-increasing shortage of potable water for the residents of Karachi.

He stated this on Monday while speaking at a briefing held at the Governor House to review progress on the K-IV Greater Karachi Water Supply Scheme being built with the support of the federal government.

The governor said on the occasion that the fulfillment of the potable water requirements of the city was a hard task keeping in view the phenomenal increase in the population of Karachi. He said the K-IV water supply scheme was an important project for as this would provide total 650 million gallons daily additional water supply to the residents of the city in three phases.

The governor said that the K-IV project would fulfil the requirement of potable water of the residents of the city to a large extent. He said that the project in the first two phases would each supply 260 MGD additional water supply while in the third phase it would give 130 MGD water to Karachi.

He added that a campaign should be launched to motivate the masses to consume and use water with due caution as Pakistan had been included in the list of countries facing a situation of serious water stress.

He said that the water shortage would become more severe in the coming days. He said that the previous government had started working on the K-IV water supply project in view of the longstanding civic issues of the city.

The governor said Karachi was being supplied with water from two main sources, i.e. the Indus River and the Hub Dam, but the water supply from these two main sources was proved to be highly insufficient in view of the increase in the population of the city.

He said that in this regard the K-IV project had been designed to draw additional water supply from the regular source of Keenjar Lake fed from the Indus River. The project director of K-IV Scheme Asad Zaman briefed the governor on the progress of the K-IV project and said that the additional water supply from the source of Keenjhar Lake would be supplied to Karachi after passing through different stages of water filtration and cleaning.