June 18, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 13, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 17: Water shortage in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi is likely to persist in the coming years as the national budget for 2008-09 has provided no funds for the Ghazi Barotha Water Supply Project (GBWSP).

Dawn has learnt that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had sought Rs2 billion from the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for its three big projects but the federal government ignored the request completely.

A senior official of CDA described the Rs47 billion mega project as “the only remedy to overcome the perennial water shortage” in the two cities which are growing bigger every day.

Alternative plans to build small dams to store rainwater flowing down the hills in the north of the twin cities were shelved being too expensive.

“Not only the government denied PSDP funds for our three big development schemes, including the Ghazi-Barotha project, it also cut non-development expenditure of the CDA,” said the official.

Now the civic authorities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi will have to stop leakage and wastage of water in their distribution systems and the citizens will have to learn to conserve the present supplies.

Though costly the Ghazi-Barotha scheme is the only viable solution to overcome water shortage in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. If work had started on it this year, its first phase would have been completed by 2011. Delay in initiating the scheme could only aggravate the problem.

It is learnt the civic authorities of the two cities were hopeful to receive federal funds for the project after which they intended to seek permission from Indus River System Authority (Irsa) to start it.

Before the federal budget was announced, CDA Chairman Kamran Lashari had told Dawn that there was no hindrance in the way of the project but it required Irsa’s approval.

PC-I of the project had already been sent to the federal government for final approval. According to the document the first phase was expected to supply 200 million gallons of water per day (MGD), to be shared equally by the two cities.