LAHORE: Opposition Leader in the Punjab Assembly Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed on Sunday issued a ‘white paper’ on the availability of safe drinking water in Punjab without substantiating the statistics.

The opposition leader regularly issues white papers with fat figures intending to show “bad governance” of the Punjab government. However, the opposition leader’s spokesman could not justify the figures; he claimed that unsafe drinking water was causing 1.1 million deaths, including 250,000 children, annually. The spokesman gave a countrywide figure of the deaths, while no province-wise break-up was provided.

The opposition leader also stated that every ninth person in Punjab was suffering from hepatitis C, causing 23,000 deaths annually.

On being told that hepatitis C was a blood-borne and not water-borne disease, there was neither a response to the Dawn query from the opposition leader’s party nor his spokesman. There was no clarification about the 23,000 deaths till the filing of this report.

In his ‘white paper’, the opposition leader chided the PML-N government for its failure to provide safe drinking water to masses during any of its tenures. He said people were still compelled to drink water contaminated by arsenic and faeces.

Apparently quoting a government report, he claimed there was arsenic in drinking water in most cities of Punjab, including Lahore, Islamabad, Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Kasur, Gujrat, Multan, Layyah, Sargodha and Sialkot.

He said funds were allocated in the budget for safe drinking water, but never utilised. “Some 55 per cent allocated funds during the last three years were never utilised,” he added.

He said Saaf Pani Project manager Malik Waris had been arrested, while 22 others nominated in the first information were yet to be nabbed and investigated. He claimed that Rs7 billion were squandered in this project. The housing minister, provincial lawmakers and officials visited China, Thailand and Dubai spending millions of rupees from the government exchequer but without any results.

The opposition leader further said Pakistan’s 90pc companies were selling substandard drinking water, juices, cold drinks and milk without any checks.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2018