LARKANA: Retired Justice Amir Hani Muslim, head of Supreme Court-mandated commission on quality of water and drainage in Sindh, warned chief municipal officer (CMO) to immediately make main sewage pumping station near central prison functional or face legal action.

Justice Muslim was visiting the city’s water supply and drainage installations along with Deputy Commis­sioner Syed Murtaza Shah, superintendent engineer (SE) of public health engineering (PHE) department Abdul Wahab Sahito, SSP, and CMO Zamir Hussain Abro on Sunday when he found that the main pumping station was not working. He was surprised to learn that standby generator for running the pumping machi­nes during loadshedding was lying idle because it had no battery to start it. He asked the PHE official and the CMO about it and the CMO replied the battery had run out of power, hence the generator was not functioning.

The CMO remained tight-lipped when the judge asked him who had removed the battery and expressed frustration at the official’s negligence.

“Can’t you get even a battery recharged and make the pumping station functional, which is not working due to this minor fault,” he said.

Justice Muslim ordered the CMO to ensure all the batteries at all pumping stations were working and directed him to immediately make the main pumping station functional or face the music.

He found heaps of garbage and litter around Shahbaz pumping station and asked the CMO to immediately clear the area of the garbage.

He visited under-construction oxidation ponds in Umrani village on the outskirts of the city and took notice of complaints that the land for the construction of ponds had had been acquired at low rate.

The judge advised the landowners to use proper channels to get compensation rate raised and ordered the PHE official to expedite work on the ponds so that sewage could be disposed of after proper treatment. Trees should also be planted around the ponds, he said.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2018