RAWALPINDI, Sept 1: Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) will soon exempt small and low income generating private schools of commercial water charges, the agency’s managing director, Aslam Sabzwari, told Dawn.

Talking to this reporter, Mr Sabzwari said Wasa’s finance department would soon conduct a survey in this regard and point out small private schools before exempting them of commercial water charges.

Recently, the owners of small private schools had approached Wasa’s office and asked the authorities that they be charged at domestic rates instead of commercial.

The owners told Wasa’s officials that their schools were small and did not earn much. Besides, they were already paying domestic charges for electricity and gas to Islamabad Electric Supply Company and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited, respectively. The owners maintained that they could not afford to pay the present skyrocketing commercial water charges.

Mr Sabzwari, however, said the owners of such small schools should directly approach Wasa’s office and not involve NGOs in the matter. Some NGOs, he claimed, were trying to exploit the situation for their own vested interests.

Responding to a query, Mr Sabzwari said after the completion of the Asian Development Bank-sponsored Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Project (phase 1), the new water supply network had been laid in Shamasabad, Sadiqabad, Pirwadhai and Khayaban-i-Sir Syed areas.

The timely monsoon rains, he said, had recharged the underground water reservoirs in the city. The agency’s 209 tubewells, he maintained, were now supplying 22 million gallons per day (MGD) to various parts of the city compared to 18MGD which the tubewells were supplying before the rains. He said the city needed 36MGD and the agency was fulfilling the need without facing any shortage.

When asked about the decrease in the city’s water table from 50 feet to over 210 feet in the last two decades, Mr Sabzwari accepted that the water table had decreased considerably.

He said a private firm was conducting a technical survey before initiation of the ADB-backed Rawalpindi Environment Improvement Project. It was also considering the feasibility of water supply to the city from Ghazi Barotha Hydel Project in the near future.

The private firm, he added, was considering water supply to the city from Chirah Dam along with another dam.

The technical study, Mr Sabzwari maintained, included devising a comprehensive sewerage system for the city as 56 per cent of the residential areas were without a well-planned sewerage system since independence.

Moreover, the survey was also considering the feasibility of establishing a sewerage treatment plant near Adiala Road.

The Project Management Unit (PMU) had already acquired 250 acres for this purpose, he said. It was also studying the feasibility of establishing a solid waste management plant near Chak Baily Khan Road on about 75 acres, which the Tehsil Municipal Administration (TMA) had acquired in advance, he added.