PESHAWAR, March 8: Lack of capacity of tehsil municipal administrations and financial constraints are likely to affect sustainability of water purification plants being installed under the Clean Drinking Water for All (CDWA) project.
Officials told Dawn that TMAs, being responsible for municipal functions including water supply under the Local Government Ordinance, 2001, were faced with inefficiency, which was affecting their service delivery.
They said that shortage of technical staff created by “irrational” devolution of the Public Health Engineering Department and inadequate use of existing staff in some areas were the main factors behind inefficiency of TMAs in the NWFP.
“The capacity problem of TMAs will affect implementation of the Clean Drinking Water for All project, if remedial steps like on-job training of officials are not taken,” they said.
Under the prime minister’s directive, two separate water projects – Clean Drinking Water for All and Clean Drinking Water Initiative – were launched by the federal government a few years ago, which were later merged and transferred to the Ministry of Industries.
Under the CDWA, the government will instal around 6,035 water purification plants of different capacities, one each in every union council of the country. The project’s cost is estimated at Rs7.8 million.
Apart from issues relating to capacity of service providers, officials believe that ensuring sufficient resources for regular operation of the project is a big challenge for the planners.
The federal government, according to them, would bear operational and maintenance cost of the project for first three years and then it would be handed over to district governments.
“District governments and particularly TMAs do not have the requisite expertise and resources to run such purification plants,” the officials said.
They said the government would need to allocate a handsome amount in the budget for district governments to keep such plants operational.
The officials also said that procedural delays in project execution at the federal were also a factor hindering implementation of the project within the stipulated time period.
They said the NWFP government had identified nine districts to be covered on priority basis in the first phase of the project. These districts are Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda, Kohat, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat, Mardan, Abbottabad and Bannu.
Similarly, details of conducting water analysis of proposed sites for the purification plants in each union council have been communicated to the federal government.
Contractors have been hired for three months for maintenance of purification plants already installed under the Clean Drinking Water Initiative. But, they have yet to make the plants functional.
The NWFP government has established a project management unit in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat and appointed a project director.
Likewise, as per requirement of the approved PC-I, different posts have been advertised and applicants are being short-listed.
The provincial government will contribute Rs253.558 million to the project which has been approved by the Provincial Working Development Party.