Water commission threatens to stop constructions in DHA, Clifton

Commission maintains constr­uction should be allowe­d after resolu­tion of jurisd­iction issues

KARACHI:

The judicial commission on water and sanitation threatened on Monday to place a ban on construction within the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) and Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC) areas.

During the hearing of the water commission held in the Sindh High Court, head of the commission, Justice (retd) Amir Hani Muslim warned that all construction activity may be put to a halt if CBC and DHA fail to define their territorial limits.

Meanwhile, the federal defence ministry assured the Supreme Court-mandated water commission of immediate measures to stop pollution of Sea View beach.

During the hearing, Defence Ministry Joint Secretary Farooq Hassan said they will make sewage treatment plants functional at the earliest to stop discharge of untreated sewage in the sea.

He informed the commission that the defence secretary convened a meeting in Islamabad on May 31 in light of the commission's directives. The meeting instructed the CBC and DHA to stop discharging sewage at Sea View beach.



It decided to construct a sewage treatment plant in the Kublai Khan area and complete this project by August, 2019, he added. The existing practice of releasing untreated sewage in the storm drains leading towards the sea will be stopped after four months and the sewage will be channeled to a treatment plant.

In May, a senior research officer of the Pakistan Council of Research on Water Resources, Dr Ghulam Murtaza, collected water samples from the beach for a lab test. He described the beach's contamination in his report to the commission as alarming, injurious to human health and hazardous to marine life.

It was pointed out that the sewage was being discharged from four separate locations from Dua and China Town restaurants to Do Darya.

The meeting agreed that the restaurants and kiosks along the beach will be barred from disposing off sewage in the sea. The joint secretary assured that the sewage of DHA Phase VIII will be treated at the existing treatment plant in the same phase.

However, sewage of Phases I to VII will be treated in the proposed plant. Hassan maintained that the sewage of some of the phases is supposed to be treated at the Mehmoodabad treatment plant, which is operated by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB).



"... the stance of the DHA is debatable as according to them, some of the phases were planned in such a manner that their sewerage was to be treated through Mehmoodabad," the commission observed.

However, KWSB Managing-Director Khalid Mehmood Shaikh denied that any such agreement existed over the plant in Mehmoodabad, the capacity of which is 180 million gallons per day. Justice (retd) Muslim directed the commission's focal person, Syed Asif Hyder Shah, to coordinate with the CBC, DHA and KWSB over construction of the new plant and its capacity.

The commission was informed that the KWSB has provided 114 water connections to the cantonment boards and related installations. These include 41 metered connections and 73 which are not metered. The KWSB was ordered to install metres in all the connections, along with cameras to monitor the flow of water.

With regard to the billing disputes between KWSB and K-Electric, the commission ordered the water board's managing-director to pay the amount to the power distribution company within seven days. The focal person was asked to coordinate between the two agencies for resolution of the matter of load-shedding of the water board's water pumping stations.

Justice (retd) Muslim objected to the water board's procedure of collective punishment by stopping supply from the bulk supply to a certain locality instead of cutting off the individual supply line of illegal connections.

The water board was asked to cut the illegal connections and resume the stopped bulk supply and submit periodical reports in this regard to the focal person. "No compromise [can be made] on unjust distribution of water."