Judicial commission annoyed over delay in completion of water supply, drainage schemes
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DADU: The Supreme Court-appointed commission on drinking water and drainage in Sindh on Saturday took notice of inordinate delay in completion of a water supply scheme at Machhi Mori and directed departments concerned to stop payment to a contractor of an under-construction drainage scheme.
Retired Justice Amir Hani Muslim, who heads the one-man commission, visited the scheme’s site and asked public health engineering department’s engineer Nazeer Ahmed Shaikh why work on the ponds had not been started yet.
He observed that even after Rs82 million had been released to the contractor, the work had not moved ahead from the position he had witnessed during his previous visit. No rehabilitation work of the scheme had been carried out either as directed earlier, he said.
Dadu Municipal Committee chairman Ghulam Mustafa Brohi said the work had been delayed as the water supply scheme had been redesigned and it would now be connected with the old water supply scheme of the city at Dua Chowk so that it did not get mixed with sewerage lines.
Justice Muslim directed DC Salim Raza Khuhro and PHE engineer Shaikh to prepare a PC-1 for the scheme and said that care must be taken to ensure that fresh water did not mix with old sewers. The scheme should be completed at the earliest, he said.
He visited under-construction drainage disposal scheme at police headquarters and along embankments of Dadu Canal and was shocked to see sewage and human waste being released into the canal at Dodani Shaikh and Shahjhan Park.
He directed the municipal committee chairman Ghulam Mustafa Brohi to immediately stop releasing the city’s sewage into the canal and ordered him to remove all drains and stop payment to the contractor of the drainage scheme.
He advised the officers concerned to shift the drainage scheme to a suitable spot because it happened to be near the sites for IBA College, district headquarters hospital and Dadu campus which would also have their residential colonies, hence the present site was not suitable for drainage disposal ponds.
District sessions Judge Jamshed Ahmed Awan and Deputy Commissioner Raja Shahzaman Khuhro also accompanied Justice Muslim during the visit.
Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2018
