ISLAMABAD, April 26: The city managers have signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese company in a bid to execute the much-awaited Rs47 billion Ghazi Barotha water supply project (GBWSP) to meet the water needs of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

“The MoU was signed by Capital Development Authority (CDA) Chairman Farkhand Iqbal and representatives of the Chinese company - CMEC - during the former’s recent visit to Beijing,” said the CDA spokesman, Ramzan Sajid.

The project is aimed at drawing around 200 million gallons of water per day from River Indus at Ghazi Barotha that will be shared by the two cities equally.

Currently, Islamabad is dependent on Simly and Khanpur dams from where it gets 65 mgd against its total need of 150 mgd. As a result, water shortage complaints in the city go up to about 1,500 per day in the summer.

“The water conduction from Ghazi Barotha will help bridge the gap between demand and supply,” added the spokesman.

According to the MoU, the Chinese company will send its technical team to Islamabad to help carry out further studies and execute the project.

Prepared in 2005, the GBWSP was to be completed in 2009 but it faced inordinate delay due to reservations by the provinces over sharing of the Indus water and financial constraints.

He said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had formed a special committee to convince the provinces to execute the project. Subsequently, the federating units agreed and CDA has started work on execution of the project.

“All the codal formalities are likely to be completed till September 2012 after which work at the project will begin,” said the CDA chairman.

In the CDA board meeting on April 3, the city managers again approved the plan to draw water from River Indus with financial and technical assistance of China.