Murad orders making all water projects functional

Sindh’s chief minister has said his government is committed to providing potable water to the people of the province, so all water supply and reverse-osmosis filtration projects need to be made functional by taking emergency measures.

CM Syed Murad Ali Shah issued the order on Wednesday during a joint meeting of different government departments responsible for setting up, operating and maintaining water supply and drainage projects.

By means of a presentation the chief executive was informed that there are 2,109 water filtration plants, including 1,620 RO plants and 242 ultra-filtration plants, of which 818 are non-functional.

On this CM Shah gave the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) a month’s time to make all the RO and UF plants functional that have been rendered non-functional on account of the functionality of machinery and equipment, the total dissolved solids and pH value of the produced water, membranes, filters, capacity of the plant and human resources.

He said that where there are electricity issues, the plants must be converted to run on solar energy. He also decided to contract out the operation and maintenance of all RO plants through the competitive process. He directed the finance department to provide the necessary funds.

“I want you to monitor and evaluate O&M [operations & maintenance] through district oversight committees to be notified by the chief secretary,” he said, adding that an android-based software application should be developed along with a dashboard for monitoring & evaluation (M&E).

The chief minister was informed that all the RO plants would be installed with RO meters and sensors for M&E within a month. The terms of reference of the district oversight committees would be as follows:

To oversee proper O&M of all schemes and plants, to oversee M&E of all schemes and RO plants, especially in reference to their O&M and fortnightly analysis of issues relating to O&M of the schemes and plants, the report on which would be submitted to the PHED secretary.

The chief executive was also informed that there are 5,091 water supply and drainage schemes, of which 2,494 are non-functional while 244 have been abandoned.

Chief Secretary Maj (retd) Azam Suleman Khan informed CM Shah that in the light of the Supreme Court’s order all water supply and drainage schemes have been transferred to the PHED.

The meeting decided to make functional all the non-functional water supply and drainage projects and then monitor them through the district oversight committees. The committees would be notified under deputy commissioners (chairmen), PHED executive engineers, taluka assistant commissioners and assistant engineers of the relevant talukas. Shah directed the CS to get all the required funds released from the finance department so the projects could be made functional.