LAKKI MARWAT: The authorities of tehsil municipal administration and public health engineering department have failed to make functional a faulty water filtration plant and water testing laboratory built years ago. The facilities have a key role in provision of clean drinking water to local residents.

The only filtration plant was set up over a decade ago during the tenure of General Pervez Musharraf in 2006. To implement the vision a project was launched to set up safe water purification plants in all union councils across the country.

The only filtration plant established in Lakki city-I union council was made function in 2007 but it soon failed to serve the residents of urban locality,” said a local political activist Ahmad Nawaz. He said the water filtration plant went out of order months after it was inaugurated by the then district coordination officer, Khushal Khan.

“To have an access to clean water is the basic right of every citizen but the situation is quite different in Lakki Marwat district where unclean water is killing people,” said Sabz Ali Naveed, an activist of Jamaat-i-Islami.

He said local residents lacked the basic facility of safe water. He regretted that in many rural localities people used water of rainwater ponds which was not fit for human consumption. Mr Naveed added that the government had sunk tube-wells in rural and urban areas to provide the people with drinking water facility, ignoring the fact that provision of clean water without installation of purification plant was not possible.

Water testing lab being used by police personnel

The water filtration plant was a blessing of Allah Almighty for the residents of urban locality. People especially traders used to fetch purified water from it for drinking purpose. The successive governments and local bodies’ representatives did not pay any heed to repair the faulty facility during the last several years.

The tehsil municipal administration also showed negligence in ensuring maintenance and repair of the filtration plant to keep it functional.

“The out of order purification plant has subjected the local residents to face the shortage of clean and safe drinking water,” said a citizen.

Another chronic issue relating to availability of potable water is the non functional water testing laboratory at the district headquarters complex Tajazai. The building of the laboratory was built during the previous PPP regime but it could not be made fully functional so far.

The building is used by levy police personnel to stay therein and that the local authorities seem disinterested in making the lab functional.

An official source in the know-how said that essential equipment and machinery had already been provided to the local public health engineering department for the facility.

“The facility is not fully functional because of delay in recruitment of skilled manpower,” he maintained, saying that interview for selection of the skilled staff is scheduled to be held soon after Eid.

He said that the machinery and equipment had been installed in the laboratory and was being used to carry out examination of water samples. The source said the public health engineering department had approached district administration to get vacate the rooms from levy police personnel.

“The department is also in contact with Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) for installation of electricity meter in the water testing laboratory,” he added.

“Like residents of urban localities, the rural population also lack clean drinking water facility,” said a social and religious activist Hafiz Minhajud Din. Hailing from Zangikhel village in the lower Marwat area, he said that in many rural areas people stored rainwater in traditional ponds and used it for drinking and other domestic purposes.

“The faulty and broken tube-wells have further aggravated the situation in rural areas where the use of contaminated water is the main reason for prevalence of diseases,” he claimed.

Local residents condemned the bigwigs of tehsil and district governments as well as lawmakers from the district for not taking practical steps to repair faulty water filtration plant and make the water testing laboratory fully functional.

They said that provision of safe and clean water to the residents was at the bottom of priorities of bigwigs of tehsil and district governments.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2017