October 25, 2003	Saturday	Sha’aban 28, 1424

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RAWALPINDI, Oct 24: Councillors and representatives of an NGO on Friday held a token demonstration in front of Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) office, asking the agency to stop the supply of contaminated water from Kali Tanki to its more than 40,000 consumers.

During the demonstration, the protesters were holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans, asking officials of Wasa and the local government to ensure supply of clean drinking water.

Earlier, representatives of The Network (TN) and the councillors held a briefing at Rawalpindi Press Club during which they informed mediapersons about the findings of their recently conducted laboratory tests of Kali Tanki’s water.

Samples had been taken from different points of the storage tank during the last two years. These were analyzed at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) laboratories.

The findings termed the water of Kali Tanki, where about 30,000 gallons were stored, as unfit for human consumption.

According to the findings of the report, heavy layers of foul smelling mud and other impurities had settled in the tank.

During the press briefing, Dr Haroon Ibrahim, The Network’s water project coordinator, and programme coordinator Dr Ehsan Latif said Kali Tanki had not been cleaned by any civic body for the last 77 years.

This contaminated water was a source of various diseases like hepatitis, diarrhoea, typhoid, jaundice and many gastro- intestinal diseases, they said. Despite receiving repeated complaints from citizens, they said Wasa was still supplying contaminated water to majority of the areas.

The Local Bodies Ordinance put the responsibility of providing safe drinking water to people of the local administration.

A source in the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) told Dawn on Friday that repairing of Kali Tanki, that was part of the Rs4,136 million World Bank-funded Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Project (UWSSP), could not be carried out due to differences between the officials of Wasa and Project Management Unit (PMU).

The UWSSP, under which new pipelines were to be laid in some parts of the city and clean drinking water was to be provided to Wasa’s consumers, had been wrapped up a few months ago as it was officially announced that the project had been completed, the source said.

“Despite our repeated requests and complaints, the PMU officials ignored the repairing of Kali Tanki. Though the UWSSP has been completed, its goals cannot be achieved without its repair,” an RDA official told Dawn.

That is why, he said, Wasa has yet to take complete maintenance charge of the UWSSP from the PMU. He said the agency’s officials still saw many loopholes in the project, therefore, refrained from taking its charge.

He said a $150,000 ADB-funded survey for the UWSSP’s second phase, Rawalpindi Environment Improvement Project (REIP), was being conducted by Nespak despite the fact that the first phase of the project was yet to be completed.

The provincial government as well as the officials of World Bank, he said, should take notice of the issue as the locals were still consuming water filled with impurities despite spending Rs4,136 million on the project.

Another Wasa official said they were again busy in talks with PMU officials regarding the repair of Kali Tanki, which required more than Rs2 million. Wasa was facing severe pressure from consumers and some NGOs as the water of Kali Tanki was not fit for human consumption, he added.