17 April 2004	Saturday	26 Safar 1425

ISLAMABAD, April 16: Chairman National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) Daniyal Aziz said on Friday that devolution plan and police reforms constituted a break from the status quo in the country.

Speaking at a one-day seminar on water and sanitation facilities organized by the NRB in collaboration with the World Bank, Mr Aziz asserted that these reforms marked a break from the old policy of trying to obtain new outcomes from the old institutions. This attitude had only rendered harm to the nation, he added.

Welcoming the Nazims from all over Pakistan participating in the seminar, he said the bureau had been holding such round table discussion for cross-fertilisation of ideas and learning from the experiences of other countries and would continue to do so in future.

In this regard, he particularly mentioned the steps taken by the Haripur Municipality in contracting out developing projects and rural water supply schemes through MoUs. Likewise, it had contracted out security of Haripur town through a private firm instead of depending on police. All these reforms had been achieved at a greatly reduced cost.

Besides the Nazims of districts and cities, the seminar was also attended by the representatives of provincial governments, DCOs and senior officials of water and sewerage authorities and Karachi Water Supply Board (KAWSB).

The highlight of the seminar was a presentation on a project presented by the World Bank experts Junaid Ahmed, Raja Rehan Arshad, Fawad Khan and David Savage. They presented different approaches used by South Africa, India, the Philippines, Chile etc. in operating their water and sanitation projects in mega cities.

Pointing to the dismal state of water and sanitation systems in Pakistan, Junaid Ahmed said all diseases emanated from the unclean water available to the people. "If I were the minister, I would have not set up any primary health clinic and diverted all the funds to water supply."

Terming water "an economic good", the model proposes establishment of a company to manage water supply system for a city or a region with a string of downstream sub agents. As this would raise the cost of water and sanitation services for the end-user, the model recommends subsidy for the very poor.

But a member of his team had no answer when asked by this correspondent about the "definition of poor" because poverty was constructed in different ways in Pakistan - some seeing it as the inability to afford two meals a day and others viewing it as the ability to fulfil all the human needs such as food, shelter, clothes, healthcare and education.

According to the statistics, water losses ranged from 40 to 50 per cent in different cities due to leaking pipes. This was attributable to defective planning which forced many households to illegal tapping of the mainline. This creates vacuum in the pipelines resulting in substances and vermin seeping into the pipes through minute holes or faulty connections.

The Nazims of Karachi, Faisalabad and Zarghoon Town (Quetta) made presentations on the systems prevailing in their respective towns and the problems faced by them.

Apart from these presentations, the seminar was characterised by a lively discussion provoked by the questions and grievances aired by Nazims that were answered very ably by Naeemul Haq on behalf of the NRB.

The Nazims generally complained about the attitude of provincial governments who were accused of withholding funds. In Quetta, for example, the provincial government had reversed the devolution plan by appropriating the powers allocated to local councils by the Local Government Ordinance, it was alleged.