LAHORE: The government is set to complete and commission 2,750 new water filtration plants by September this year in various districts of Punjab under the phase-I of the Chief Minister Saaf Pani Programme with Rs45 billion, Dawn has learnt.

“Under phase-I, we have to install and commission 4,747 plants. Of this, the tender and bidding process for 2,750 plants was completed in February this year, followed by starting work in March with a completion deadline of September this year. We are confident to commission 2,750 plants by September, followed by the completion of the remaining 1,996 by February next year, subject to the availability of required funds,” explained Punjab Saaf Pani Authority Director General (Projects) Mazhar Hussain Khan while talking to Dawn on Sunday. “Till June 30, we will be able to commission 1,100 new water filtration plants by all means,” he maintained.

The provision of safe and clean drinking water is among the most fundamental obligations of the state to its citizens. As it is a matter of public health, human dignity and prosperity, the people, for decades, particularly in our rural areas in districts of South Punjab and Pothohar belt have suffered a crisis of unsafe drinking water. As independent scientific assessments have consistently documented the presence of arsenic, elevated total dissolved solids (TDS) and microbial contamination in groundwater reportedly across the province, the human cost of this issue has been profound with a persistent burden on healthcare due to waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis and typhoid etc, affecting people, especially children. It also places an extra burden on women, who too are often responsible for fetching water from far distances for their families. Despite the scale of this challenge, the province lacked a dedicated institutional architecture for delivering safe drinking water.

As earlier interventions suffered from weak monitoring and absence of modern technology, the sitting Punjab government had re-energised the Punjab Saaf Pani Authority (PSPA) as the sole mandated body for the planning, installation, operation and maintenance of water filtration plants across Punjab. The plants that had been completed previously by various departments and civic agencies (Wasa, local councils, local government, communication and works, public health departments etc) were also handed over to the PSPA for maintenance and rehabilitation.

“After establishment as an authority in 2024, we had inherited as many as 5,615 water filtration plants already installed by various departments in the past. Many of these were not working since the life of a plant was three to five years under the standard operating procedures. Following this, we launched a province-wide rehabilitation drive and succeeded in making 1,679 plants operational,” the DG said, adding that the drive was still underway to revive 736 more plants within the shortest possible time. Since the remaining 3,200 plants were already operational, the cost incurred on the revival of 2,415 plants was over Rs5 billion.

To a question, he said, the districts where the 2,750 new plants were being built included Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Rawalpindi, Attock, Jhelum, Chakwal, Talagang and Murree. The remaining 1,996 plants under phase-I would be installed in Khushab, Bhakkar, Mianwali, D G khan, Layyah, Kot Addu, Muzaffargarh and Taunsa districts, he added.

According to him, under phase-II of the project, the government, building on the momentum of phase-I, plans to install approximately 9,000 more water filtration plants on which huge funds amounting to Rs82 billion would be spent, extending the benefit to over 47 million citizens during the next financial year.

When contacted, a senior Punjab government official told Dawn that in parallel, the government was also establishing water bottling plants to provide safe and clean drinking water in four districts --DG Khan, Khushab, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan. “These plants will be completed soon, as 90pc work has been completed in this regard,” Noor Ul Amin Mengal, the secretary of the Housing, Public Health and Public Health Engineering Department told this reporter.

He said the government had also launched the 1336 helpline, a 24/7 complaint management system for water filtration plants, aimed at empowering citizens and strengthening public accountability in service delivery. “We have also developed and implemented a cluster-based monitoring system (CBMS), an artificial intelligence (AI) based field monitoring platform which is now operational across the province, facilitating evidence-based decision making and real-time oversight of every plant,” he explained. According to him, the GIS mapping of the PSPA’s filtration plants was also being done in a bid to enable evidence-based planning and precision in resource allocation.

“We have also decided to establish monitoring & response centers (MRCs) through Saaf Pani Complexes at the district-level across the province providing a unified command-and-control architecture for effective field oversight,” he maintained.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2026