LAHORE, April 10: Federal and Punjab government officials and many experts from water quality sector will sit across the table here on Monday (tomorrow) for two-day deliberations on the virtually unheard issue of the lethal poison arsenic in underground water of three cities in southern part of the Punjab, Bahawalpur, Multan and Rahim Yar Khan.

The Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) has been conducting research on the quality of water in 21 cities of the country, including eleven cities of the Punjab, for the last about three years. The project was undertaken in collaboration with Unicef.

Findings from Punjab cities are to be presented at a seminar organized by the PCRWR and the provincial Local Government Department. The three cities where the arsenic was found are in the cotton belt of the province.

According to an official of the PCRWR, poison content in water of these cities 'had crossed the threshold value'.

Asked what could be the reason for poison in water in these cities, PCRWR chairman Dr Akram Kahloon said that arsenic was contained in underground rocks but it also seeped in to water due to the use of fertilizers and pesticides that have arsenic as component of some products applied to crops.

Dr Kahloon said that arsenic had been found at different levels below the ground, both at around 200 feet deep and shallow levels; there was no relationship between levels where arsenic is part of sub-surface water.

While conclusions thrown up by the research are authentic, Dr Kahloon agreed that there was need for more and constant screening not only in the affected places but also the rest of the country. It should be a continuous process, he stressed.

The cities of Punjab that have been investigated, besides the three arsenic-affected habitats, are Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi.

Dr Kahloon said that plans were in hand to investigate quality of water in other cities of Punjab as well as other provinces.

An PCRWR official told Dawn that permanent 'grid points' had been established for obtaining samples in cities where investigations had been conducted. He said that the research was comprehensive but needed to be made a regular process to keep a watch over the quality of water in the country.

Asked what was the prescription for controlling poison in the water, Dr Kahloon said that only those fertilizers and pesticides should be applied that had no arsenic component. As for rocks containing arsenic, nothing can be done about that, he said.