HYDERABAD, Jan 14: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has formed a committee, headed by Naib Nazim Zafar Rajput, to determine the quantum of responsibility of each department for ensuring uninterrupted water supply to people. He was speaking at a news conference at the district nazim secretariat on Saturday in the wake of water crisis in the city on and after Eid which he attributed to power failure at the filter plant.

He said the committee would discuss the matter with a consultant of the district government working on development works. He said a report of the committee would be provided to the media when it was finalized.

He said that two more lagoons would soon be built. He said that the consultant had proposed that a third lagoon prepared out of silt obtained during de-silting of the existing two lagoons would only be for storage which would have such a mechanism to divert its water to the two lagoons when needed.

He said Rs120 million announced by the Sindh governor in 2004 was being released.

The nazim said that Rs1 billion special projects announced by the adviser to the chief minister on local bodies last year were part of the president’s package. He added that while the Sindh government had released funds for the package, no amount had been released by the federal government. He said all the projects were being supported by the Sindh government.

About the annual closure of the River Indus, he said that due to his efforts, the closure period was reduced from one month to 15 days. Thereafter, he said, because of Eid, he again requested the irrigation department to release water in the combined channel and the Akram Wah for lifting of by Wasa on Jan 9 at 6am, otherwise water was to be released on the night of Jan 10.

He said Hesco had yet to provide a changeover system for dual supply of electricity at the filter plant and other water works for which Rs2.5 million had been paid to the company on its request a long time ago.

“On account of power breakdown, the entire cycle of water supply gets affected and we have to wait for a line superintendent to run an alternative source of power. We want our own technicians to run the alternative power supply system to ensure smooth water supply”, the nazim said. Tenders for obtaining standby generators at a cost of Rs140 million had been floated and in the next three months, the water supply and sewage disposal network would be attached with generators so that Wasa did not depend on Hesco, he added.

He said that against the daily requirement of 54 million gallons of filtered water, Wasa provided 60MGs of water to residents as soon as water was lifted from the combined channel and the Akram Wah on Jan 10.

He said major parts of Hyderabad’s three talukas were supplied water.

He admitted that certain tail-end localities had remained without water supply.

The nazim said pumping machines, installed by residents in homes for sucking water, also affected supply of water to tail-end areas because while water supply lines were spread over thousands of meters, some areas did not get full supply of water because the same was sucked by machines in homes.