KARACHI, Jan 29: Around 180mgd (million gallons per day) water was wasted due to leakages and theft, admitted Karachi Water and Sewerage Board chief. Speaking at a forum on "Current and future development programmes of KWSB", organized by a non-governmental organization Urban Resource Centre at the PMA House on Thursday, KWSB managing director Brig Asif Ghazali said that around Rs1.2 billion water loss reduction project, which had been approved, would be launched as soon as the funds were released.

He said that water losses in other countries stood at 10 to 15 per cent, while here the losses were very high and there were chances that some of the water was also stolen. Nearly 30 per cent of the total water supplied to Karachi was wasted due to leakages and illegal connections.

He said that a major reason of the losses and leakages was that the pipelines were laid nearly half a century back and had outlived their life. Brig Ghazali said that at present over 640mgd water was required for the city, while just around 540mgd was being supplied from the Indus river as well as Hub river sources. He said that the project to supply 100mgd water would soon be completed.

He said that water sources were nearly 150 kilometres away from the city and water had to be supplied through pumps. He said the energy cost to operate the pumps consumed between 60 and 65 per cent of the KWSB budget while around 30 to 35 per cent of the budget was spent on salaries, which left very little amount with the KWSB that could be spent for development.

The managing director of KWSB said that population growth in the city was phenomenal and it grew at a rate of around five per cent a year, which required that every five years a 100mgd project was needed to meet the ever growing demand and shorten the widening gap between the demand and supply in the city.

He said that soon the water allocation of 1,200 cusecs to the city from the Indus river would be exhausted and the government would be approached to get an additional and enhanced quota of water for the city to meet its future demands.

Brig Ghazali said that billing and the recovery system needed improvements. He said that there were around two million houses in Karachi and each one of these was getting water. But, just around 1.2 million bills - some of these might not even be reaching the customers also - were dispatched. He said that even those people, who received bills did not pay their bills which created revenue shortage to the KWSB.

He said that the arrears, which had piled up since many years, in some cases were being charged by the KWSB with the bills. He agreed that it might be difficult for the customers to pay all the arrears and he would try to prepare some policy to give some incentives enabling the customers to pay the arrears.

He said that a proposal to issue bills biannually, quarterly, or even monthly for the convenience of consumers was also being considered. Brig Ghazali said that the KWSB was planning to install the meter system at least at the town level, so that the towns could be supplied the water in bulk and they could be charged accordingly. It would be ideal that meter was installed at every household so that everybody paid just as much water it had consumed.

He said that bulk supply consumers paid their bills on time, while the retail customers did not pay on time. Responding to a question, he said that the Defence Housing Authority was supplied five million gallon water daily and the DHA paid its bills on time while Orangi Town received over 46mgd water, but, only one per cent consumers paid bills.

He said that around 7.5mgd water was supplied to different hydrants, where the entire distribution system was under the control of Rangers. However, the KWSB did not get any revenue from there, he admitted.

Brig Ghazali said that the city generated around 300mgd sewage and the three KWSB sewage treatment plants had a capacity of around 150mgd, but, the plants were not operating at full capacity and only 100mgd sewage was treated. He said that water treatment plants were also being established so that more water being supplied to the city could be treated.

He said that the government had dropped the proposal of KWSB's privatization and that at this moment there was no such proposal with the government. He said that the KWSB was not facing any staff shortage and in fact right-sizing was required. Though it was not being considered at the moment, he added.

The managing director of KWSB said that government had put the issues of water supply and sewerage on priority, as out of the Rs29billion Tameer-i-Karachi programme Rs13 billion had been allocated for water supply and sewerage projects. A new project to control water losses and strengthening distribution network had also been planned, which would be funded by federal government, he added.

He said that City Nazim was the chairman of the KWSB and its offices had also been established at town level. But, since the system was complicated and ran through all the 18 towns it was still being manned centrally.