RAWALPINDI: Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) on Wednesday formally submitted a request seeking financial help to the tune of Rs700 million from the Punjab government to bring itself out of financial crisis.

The summary was moved to the finance department following directions from the Punjab Minister for Housing, Urban Planning and Public Health Engineering Mian Mehmoodul Rasheed.

The minister in charge of RDA, Wasa and Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) visited the civic agency on Tuesday and assured the officials that a one time bail-out package would be given to the agency to bring it out of financial crisis.

A senior Wasa official told Dawn that the electricity bills for the last three months were pending and the employees had not been paid their salaries. He said the employees union were protesting and for last three days, it was observing a token strike in the offices.

He said Wasa Rawalpindi and four other big cities of Punjab demanded the government to increase water rates in their respective areas but the provincial government decided not to defer it for the next four months. In the meantime, it will give funds to the civic agencies of five big cities, he added.

In Rawalpindi, the official said the civic agency had been facing problems for the last 10 years. One reason was the increase in the number of tubewells as well as the employees who run them. Salary burden on Wasa had therefore increased.

The second reason, he added, was the electricity charges of these tubewells and the pumping machine had risen 200pc in the last 10 years whereas Wasa was getting money as per ratio set in 2008.

He said the previous provincial government, in the last year of its tenure, launched many projects in PP-6 of Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and PP-14 of Raja Hanif Advocate, and the payment of these contractors had been pending for the last three months.

He said due to non-payment of money to the contractors, they refused to repair the water supply lines, adding that work on the ongoing schemes had been stopped.

He said Wasa charged Rs98 per month from five marla house for the last 12 years and the income of the civic agency did not increase but the number of tubewells increased from 120 to 410 and thus the number of employees.

He said there was no direct funding for the civic agency and it had to meet its expenditures from the water and sewerage charges.

“In 2018-19, the difference between income and expenditure reached Rs1.321 billion. Total expenditures are Rs2.349 billion and the income is Rs1.027 billion, including Rs200 million subsidy,” he said.

When contacted, Wasa Managing Director Raja Shaukat Mehmood admitted that there was financial problem and a summary had been sent to the provincial government, seeking a bailout package for the next four months.

He said the salary of employees was pending and the payment of contractors was overdue. He said the electricity bills for the last three months and the next six months of the fiscal year would be paid through the bail-out package.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2018