KARACHI, March 22: City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal has said that the city government has initiated a number of developmental schemes at a cost of Rs16 billion to solve the problems of water supply, sewerage and water leakages in different areas of the metropolis.

Talking to reporters at the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) office at Karsaz, he said that the problems of 59 years could not be solved in a short period, but even then his government was trying to serve the people to the best of its ability.

To a question about the sewerage problems in Saddar Town, he said that he was actually nazim of 34 per cent of the population, while there were 13 other agencies collecting revenue, and were also responsible for the problems.

Kamal said that he had established sewerage lines in many localities for the first time including Mehmoodabad, Manzoor Colony, Model Colony and Jaffar Tayyar Society, where the sewerage system was non-existent, adding that projects were completed within the shortest possible time. He said that solutions to all the problems without ‘unity of command’ was not possible.

About the wastage of water, the city nazim said that a PC-1 of Rs1.2 billion of KWSB was approved by the federal government for leakages maintenance of the main trunk savers and work on the project would be initiated this year.

He said that on his visit to Bagh Ibn Qasim, President Pervez Musharraf was requested to approve the K-4 mega water supply scheme, which he assured to do after a presentation about the scheme.

With the K-4 project of additional 100 million gallons of water, the water requirements of the city would be fulfilled for the next 50 years, he stated.

Mustafa Kamal claimed that work on the establishment of sewerage lines in the industrial zones of Korangi, Landhi, Federal B Area and New Karachi was in progress, with a cost of Rs4.5 billion.

He also spoke about the revenue collection system of the KWSB and claimed that revenue collection was up by 200 per cent in his tenure.

He said that in the past, there was no regular system for distribution of bills and revenue collection and as a result the board was facing a severe financial crisis, as it could not even pay its power bills.

He said that the present number of KWSB consumers was 1.4 million, while 1.3 million bills were now regularly being distributed, ensuring collection from 70 per cent of the consumers.