MULTAN, Feb 2: The Multan district government will spend Rs 170 million on various development schemes in the city during the on-going fiscal year.

Addressing a press conference on Saturday, district Nazim Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi said after taking over as head of district government, he identified the sewerage problem as the most pressing issue of the city that needed to be addressed at the earliest.

He said the district government had directed engineers of the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Multan, to evolve a comprehensive plan at war-footing to address the long-standing problem. He said Wasa engineers had come up with a phase-wise long-term plan to resolve the issue.

He said six sewerage projects would be completed under the first phase of the master sewerage plan. These projects include provision and rehabilitation of sewer, additional outfall sewer renovation of disposal stations, desilting and purchase of cleansing machinery. Six projects of phase-I would cost Rs 55 million. He said the needed funds had been released to Wasa to complete the projects before the end of the current fiscal year.

He said the second important issue identified by the district government was repair and widening of some of the busy roads of the city. A sum of Rs 29.7 million had been earmarked for the purpose.

The nazim said the third pressing issue of the city was the supply gas to Shah Rukn-i-Alam Colony. For this, he added, the district government had released funds worth Rs 10 million to the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited and rest of cost amount of Rs 9.8 million would soon be handed over to the gas company to carry out the gas supply work on urgent basis.

He expressed satisfaction over the pace of the Multan Development Authority (MDA) drive to give slum dwellers ownership rights. In this regard, he hailed the services of MDA director general Syed Asif Jamal.

Mr Qureshi said the district government was in the process of envisaging a three-year development plan for Multan that should be acceptable to all the people of Multan irrespective of their political affiliation. He said the development projects of the district government for the Multan city were apart from the development funds of Rs 1.3 million released to each of the 58 union councils of the city.

Wasa managing director Ashiq Chaudhry briefed the newsmen about the theme and concept of the sewerage plan. He said there were some 170,000 consumers of Wasa in Multan city. Of them, as much as 140,000 were defaulters of the agency. He said the monthly revenues of Wasa which should be Rs 8 million were Rs 2 million only. “The agency is hardly paying salaries to its staff,” he added.