KARAK: Over 35,000 water schemes launched in Karak over the years have failed to resolve the chronic water shortage problem in the district.

Sources in the public health engineering department told Dawn here on Saturday that more than 1,000 water schemes in the form of tubewells and 25,000 pressure pumps and 9,000 hand pumps could not fulfill the water needs of the locals.

They said many water schemes failed to serve the purpose due to political interference, adding majority areas of the district were facing shortage of water despite the fact that a lion’s share of the royalty funds had been spent on provision of water.

They claimed that the elected representatives were utilising such funds on installation of hand and pressure pumps to serve their personal ends.

The sources said the government rate of installing a pressure pump was much higher than the privately installed pumps, thus it had become a very profitable business for the elected representatives.

They said a reverse osmoses project proposed for the district headquarters with Rs100 million cost could not be initiated during the tenure of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government.

They said that during the last PTI government 142 new water supply schemes were launched, but they could not be completed.

Asif Khan, an official of PHED department, said if the installation of pressure pumps continued with the same pace then the underground water table would further drop in about seven years.

He warned that the people of the district would face severe shortage of potable water in future if no proper planning was done to divert maximum funds towards construction of small dams to improve the water table.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2018