November 02, 2006	Thursday	Shawwal 9, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: A news report on Wednesday about water contamination in some of the filtration plants in Rawalpindi and Islamabad created a stir in government circles, prompting a rare intervention by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in the civic plight of the two cities, official sources said.

They said a high-level meeting of officials from the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pepa) and Rawalpindi city district government was held at the prime minister’s secretariat on Mr Aziz’s initiative to seek responses from the departments concerned to the report carried by Dawn.

The provision of clean drinking water at the union council level by the end of 2007 is one of the main priorities of the government under its Rs7.5 billion Clean Drinking Water for All project.

For its timely implementation and effective monitoring, the prime minister only recently directed the ministry of industries and special initiatives to take charge of the project from the environment ministry.

In a statement issued after Wednesday’s meeting, the CDA argued that the results of water sample tests attributed to Pepa in the story were ‘obsolete’ and were shared with it in August 2005. Subsequently, it added, necessary action had been taken.

But the results of the water samples mentioned in the Dawn story were compiled by Pepa in January 2006.

The CDA statement also did not specifically referred to the faulty filtration plants working in Rawalpindi city as reported in the story but talked about the whole CDWA under which 7,044 water filtration plants are to be installed throughout the country.

The CDA said Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) had been assigned the responsibility of monitoring the plants and that corrective measures had been taken with regard to the functioning of ultra-violet gadgets used in the plants.

It quoted a PCRWR survey conducted on August 19 as saying that out of 12 filtration plants installed by the CDA, 10 were supplying clean drinking water in accordance with the World Health Organisation standards.

It said corrective measures “have immediately been taken to improve the quality of the other two plants to bring them in conformity with the WHO standards”.