LAHORE, July 20: Billions of rupees are going to be wasted in the name of providing filtered drinking water to the masses owing to flaws in the project recently launched by the federal government.

Funded by a World Bank loan of Rs6 billion, the project aims at commissioning one filtration plant in each of the 4,500 union councils in the country within three years. Each plant can filter 2,000 gallons of water an hour.

The plants are being provided by the federal government but the relevant union council is required to provide a 12X12 room, power and water connections for the plant as well as bear their bills.

The expenses of salaries of the operators and maintenance of the plants will also be their exclusive responsibility.

The project has been initiated by the federal environment ministry without taking into account ground realities, critics say. In Punjab, the scheme is being executed through tehsil municipal administrations which neither have resources nor capacity for the purpose.

The major flaw of the project is that the plants are being commissioned at source. For example in Lahore, 150 UCs will also be provided with this facility. Of them, 120 are urban which are being supplied water by Wasa and their authorities claim that their tubewells pump out water from a depth of 700-plus feet and it is free from any kind of contamination.

Thus, cleaning the already clean water through a filtration plant will be only waste of funds.

There are many union councils, especially in Balochistan, which are of the size of some districts in Punjab but they lack drinking water facility. So there is need for first providing the masses with water for getting any benefit from a filtration plant there.