HYDERABAD, June 16: The district government has prepared an uplift plan under the Rs10.5 billion Hyderabad Development Project for eight talukas of the district , despite the fact that the federal government has not released the amount.

According to the plan, a copy of which was obtained by Dawn, the cost of development schemes of three city talukas, Hyderabad, Latifabad and Qasimabad, and the cantonment area will be Rs7500 million.

An amount of Rs895.526 million has been earmarked for development of the Tando Allahyar taluka, Rs648.228 million for the Tando Mohammad Khan taluka, Rs538.715 million for the Hyderabad taluka (rural), Rs476.143 million for the Matiari taluka and Rs441.338 million for the Hala taluka.

The development schemes have been proposed by legislators and taluka and union council nazims of the district. Emphasis has been laid on the master plan of Hyderabad, improvement of sewerage and water supply and drainage systems, solid waste management, road sector, beautification of the city, traffic emergency and electricity and gas supply.

District Nazim Dr Makhdoom Rafiquzzaman in his written brief said that at the time of creation of the Hyderabad Development Authority in 1976, the water supply system and sewerage could not cater to the needs of the population.

He said that the city had a filter plant with a capacity of 10 million gallons of water per day (MGD) and six MGD settled water works. He said that three sewerage pumping stations were installed in Latifabad which were transferred to the HDA.

The nazim said that under the Hyderabad water supply and sewerage project, which was implemented by the HDA with financial assistance of the Asian Development Bank, major works were carried out in the water supply sector and the filtered water facility was increased from 10 MGD to 40 MGD, which was enough to meet requirements of the population of Hyderabad up to mid 1990s.

He said that the HDA had a Rs980 million sewerage scheme in hand for Paretabad, Latifabad and some other areas which was designed to cater for sewage disposal needs till 2001. He said that Rs600 million of the amount had been utilized so far.

Mr Rafiquzzaman regretted that though there had been a continuous increase in population but pace of infrastructure development had not been commensurate with the demand of the city.

He said that the existing sewerage system of Latifabad had been laid in 1952 when the population was 50,000 which had now swelled to more than 400,000. He said drains and sewers in the City taluka had been laid in 1973 and the sewerage system of Qasimabad taluka had collapsed.

The nazim also referred to the growth of new settlements in the Hyderabad taluka which had placed extra burden on existing facilities. He said that people of Hyderabad had suffered because of inadequacy of water supply, sewerage and solid waste disposal systems as the Sindh government had not released funds in these heads.

He said that the district government had prepared a package to enhance the existing capacity of water supply, sewerage treatment and its allied network and develop new sources of water treatment and disposal of treated sewage.