September 22, 2007	Saturday	Ramazan 09, 1428

RAWALPINDI, Sept 21: Three months ago the federal government allocated Rs700 million for a water supply project for the people living in the Rawalpindi Cantonment areas but not a paisa of the grant has been released so far.

In the meantime, water problems of a sizable portion of the population in the areas have been increasing, and with that their anger at the federal government’s apathy towards its promise of providing “safe drinking water to all”.

“We have sent our request for the money to the ministry of finance through the ministry of defence but have received no word when it would be released for the project which involves laying of pipelines and building water tanks for distributing planned supplies from the Khanpur Dam,” a senior official of the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) privy to the project told Dawn on Wednesday.

Approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council in 2006, the Rs7 billion Khanpur Water Supply Project is being financed by the Asian Development Bank through a loan. It proposes to supply Rawalpindi city 15.5 million gallons per day (MGD) of water, the Rawalpindi cantonments 19MGD and Islamabad 16.5MGD.

On its part the RCB has to construct about 13 water storage structures having the capacity of 200,000 gallons of water and to lay pipelines in three phases.

The Cantonment Board has decided to build the water storage structures at Barafkhana Chowk, Dhoke Syedan, Peshawar Road, Adiala Road, Rumi Lane, Adra, Marrir Hasan Chowk, Jhanda Chichi, Tipu Road, Tench Bhata, Afshan Colony and Dhoke Chiraghdin.

The phase-1 of the Khanpur project costing Rs180 million helped RCB get 4.5MGD of water from the dam, while phase-II completed at a cost of Rs510 million got it another 9MGD.

With the completion of first two phases of the project, the cantonment areas have been getting 13.5MGD of water from the Khanpur dam.

Sources said that with this amount of water, almost two-third of the population in the cantonment area have access to the water supplied by the dam.

Sources expect that by 2010, the entire population of the cantonment area would have water supply from the Khanpur dam.

In addition, RCB was operating 80 tubewells all over the cantonment area and the flow of water was normal as per the connected load, officials said. Three more tubewells would be operational during the next few months.

In contrast, people in cantonment localities like new and old Lalazar, Tariqabad, Harley Street, Adiala Road and adjoining areas don’t get adequate supply of water and RCB has not been able to solve their problems for many years. The Chaklala Cantonment Engineer said that underground water table in Lalazar and Harley Street has gone so low that sinking tubewells there was not feasible.

Unofficially, the Cantonment Board considers Lalazar and Harley Street water deficient localities and believes the situation would not improve unless Khanpur Dam project is completed. It has abandoned plans to sink any new tubewell.

Residents of the area would have to wait for at least 30 more months before getting normal water supply.

Ironically, there is no alternative source of drinking water for the residents. Water is the costliest commodity of life for the residents who not only pay water tax but also for the water tanker.

The residents of Lalazar get water supply for 15 minutes on every alternative day. There are also localities in Lalazar where residents believe water flows into the taps only when the palm of the Valve-Operator in the area is greased.