KARACHI, July 17: Sindh Chief Secretary Fazlur Rehman on Monday directed the public health engineering department to take immediate steps for reactivating 800 water supply and sewerage schemes across the province so that people could get benefit of such facilities.

He was presiding over a meeting at his office, which reviewed the progress of a project aimed at providing facilities of potable water to citizens at union council level.

The meeting was informed that out of 124 filter plants installed in Sindh by the federal environment department only 19 were functional. It was decided that physical survey of these water filter plants would be undertaken within 15 days so that the matter could be taken up with federal authorities for making rest of the filter plants operational.

It was further informed that the documents pertaining to the memorandum of understanding with regard to these filter plants had been sent to the respective Taluka/town municipal administrations.

The paperwork for initiating second phase of the project was underway and services of district implementation committees would be sought for the installation of more filter plants by the end of August after identifying the sites for the same.

The chief secretary directed all the DCOs to take up the task on priority basis. He asked the director-general of public health engineering department, to undertake survey of 100 water supply and sewerage schemes of Badin district and submit a detailed report at least of 10 out of 100 schemes on priority basis within a month so that steps could be taken for their reactivation.

Additional Chief Secretary (Planning & Development) Ghulam Sarwar Khero, Secretary Planning Muhammad Hashim Leghari, Secretary Implementation Nazar Hussain Mahar, Special Secretary (Technical) Rehana G. Memon, Secretary Irrigation Mazhar Ali Shah, Secretary Environment Iqbal Dewan and other officials attended the meeting.—PPI