PHED provides drinking water to 16.5mn: Sindh CM

KARACHI: The Sindh government through Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) provides drinking water to 16.567 million population, which is 53 percent, while it drainage schemes cover 12.513 million, which constitutes 40 percent of the population.

This was stated in a meeting held here under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah here at the CM House, said a statement.

This was the 4th consecutive meeting on the provision of safe drinking water to the people of Sindh was held here on Monday.

The meeting was attended by Minister PHED Fayaz Butt, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Chairman P&D Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput, Secretary PHED Tamizuddin Khero and other concerned officers.

The chief minister said that the PHED is the most important in terms of provision of drinking water and responsible for the provision of drainage facility.

"Just you [PHED] have to manage it in the larger interest of the people of the province, otherwise you have a vast network and schemes." the CM Sindh directed the minister and the secretary of PHED.

Secretary PHE dept Tamizuddin Khero said that the total quantity of water required for drinking purpose in existing schemes [of PHED} is about 340 mgd, out of which 122 mgd is ground water and the remaining 218mgd is surface water.

On this, the Sindh CM said that there was further need of assessing the quantity of ground water and testing its quality.

Secretary PHE dept Tamizuddin Khero briefing the chief minister said that the government supplies water to 16.567 million population of rural and urban areas of the province, except Karachi and Hyderabad, which becomes 53 percent of the population.

Similarly, the department had developed drainage network covering 12.513 million population which comes to 40 percent of the total population of the province.

It may be noted that Karachi and Hyderabad urban areas have their own drainage and water supply systems and organization. Therefore, their facilities have not been counted or included here.

Minister Population Fayaz Butt said that there is sweet water zone where 184 urban water supply schemes, including 13 RO Plants are working.

There are Ghotki with two schemes, Sukkur four, Khairpur 22, Naushehroferoze 11, Shaheed Benazirabad , Larkana seven, seven Shikarpur seven, Jacobabad four, Kamber Nine, Kashmore three and Dadu eight.

However, four RO plants have been given to Qambar. This shows that through 184 water supply schemes, including 13 RO plants drinking water is provided to 7.922 million population living in the rural areas.

The Sindh CM said that the ground water quality in the sweet water zone is also deteriorating for which separate measures would be adopted to improve its quality.