RAWALPINDI: Merely thirty-five per cent of the urban areas of the garrison city have the facility of a sewerage system, while the remaining sixty-five per cent areas remain without a proper mechanism to deal with the sewerage, in this day and age.

A senior official of the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) told Dawn that the existing sewerage system, which was laid in 1957, covers only 35 per cent of the area, adding that even the existing sewerage lines have become old and rusty, and cannot bear the burden of the sewage due to the increasing population.

He said that the undersized sewerage system, which was hardly capable of handling the dry weather, discharges and overflows, creating unhealthy environmental conditions.

He said that in the remaining 65 per cent of the city, raw sewage was disposed off on the street side drains, due to a lack of any proper system. This raw sewage ultimately discharges into the Leh Nullah, further damaging the environment.

Interestingly, all of the downtown area does not have a proper sewerage system, thus exposing the planning of the provincial government in this regard.

Presently, there are 29,281 sewer connections in the city, and Wasa is billing the consumers on a quarterly basis, at the half the charges of the water supply.

Some of the areas like Satellite town and Khyaban-e-Sir Syed had undersized sewers, 150 millimetres, laid in the streets, which are normally used for internal domestic sewers.

These sewers cannot bear the burden during heavy rains, becoming a constant source of nuisance for the residents.

The indiscriminate disposal of the untreated sewage into the street-side drains and storm water channels of the city is a nuisance and a source of contamination, for both, the residents and the ground water aquifer, from which more than 50 per cent of the city’s drinking water supply is abstracted.

When contacted, Wasa managing director, Raja Shaukat Mehmood, said, “The Punjab government, in 2005, launched the Rawalpindi Environment Improvement Programme (REIP), with a Rs5 billion loan.

Under the programme, all the sewerage lines were to have a contact with the trunk sewer, from the Moti Mehal to Adiala, where the sewerage treatment plant was supposed to be constructed under the project.”

However, he said that the loan was suspended due to the non-execution of Leh expressway project, in 2010, and the work had stopped.

“During the work from 2005 to 2009, the sewer lines had been laid on the eastern side of the Benazir Bhutto Road, and old and rusty sewer lines in Khyaban-e-Sir Syed, Asghar Mall and Satellite Town had been replaced, but these lines had not been connected to main sewer yet,” he said.

He said that the 5000 kanals of land had been purchased in Adiala for the sewerage treatment plant, but it was lying vacant, as there is no funding for the construction of the plant.

“We had written a letter to the Punjab government, to arrange money for the basic requirements of sewerage system in the city and the construction of the plant; however, it has given no response yet,” he said.