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KARACHI, July 12: The much-trumpeted Lyari water project, through which residents of the city’s oldest locality were to be supplied an additional six million gallons of water from the K-III project, has not been completed to date, although more than six months have past since its first scheduled date of completion.
The inordinate delay in accomplishing the city government’s ambitious project has, on one hand, deprived the citizens of Lyari, particularly those living on its South Bank, of the promised water in the current summer season and on the other hand, it has escalated the project cost considerably.
The PC-1 cost of the 6mgd Lyari project was Rs126.17 million, but it has now jumped to around Rs200m.
Lyari’s total water supply would have increased to 19 million gallons of water in December 2006 had the project been completed in its stipulated period of six months, sources in the KWSB said. The locality was, at present, being supplied 13mgd of water.
Promise unfulfilled
It was on June 1, 2006 that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s chief Altaf Hussain, while delivering a speech via telephone at the Kakri Ground, had directed City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal to help resolve Lyari’s chronic water issue on a permanent basis.
Acceding to his leader’s directives, the nazim wasted no time in laying the foundation stone of the 6mgd water project on June 2 the same year at Bakra Pirri. Shortly afterwards, amid loud applause, he announced that with the completion of the project, Lyari’s lingering water issue would be resolved for the next 50 years.
The nazim, on this occasion, had also pledged that though the project’s stipulated period of completion is six months, efforts would be made to accomplish it in four months.
However the project, which envisages the laying of a 33-inch diameter PRCC pipe main from Sabzi Mandi to Bakra Piri via Gharibabad along the Lyari Expressway, could not be completed even after over a year since the laying of its foundation stone.
‘80 per cent of the work done’
However, the KWSB officials told Dawn that since more than 80 per cent of the work had already been carried out, citizens of Lyari would start getting water from the project in the next one to two months as of the total 1,400-plus pipes of 33-inch diameter, 1,300 had already been laid. Work of laying the remaining 100 pipes would be accomplished in the next three to four weeks provided no natural calamities take place.
Change of contractor behind delay
Attributing the delay in accomplishing the project to the change of contractor in the midst of the work, the well-placed KWSB sources said that the previous contractor was not only carrying out the project at a snail’s pace, he was also manoeuvring in a fashion to get the project’s cost raised much higher than what will be paid to the new contractor.
“Had we not cancelled the previous contract, the cost of the project would have jumped to double than its original,” the sources claimed.
“The previous contract had to be rescinded as the contractor was openly flouting the terms and conditions of the project,” the sources added.
