K-IV project inches a step closer to reality

Sindh govt agrees to only allocate 260 MGD of water to the project

KARACHI:

After much back and forth, it appears that the federal government’s final approval for the K-IV mega water project is finally on the cards, and due for announcement in a matter of days.

However, the Sindh government has given the red light to the mega project siphoning all of the additional 650million gallons of water per day (MGD) from the River Indus. Instead, it has agreed to only allocate 260 MGD of water to the K-IV project.

The settlement has led the federal government’s Central District Working Party (CDWP) to approve only one phase of the three-phased K-IV project. This will cost Rs126 billion, and the project will now be presented at ENEC, after which construction is expected to begin in March-April of this year and will take 20 months to conclude.

According to an official of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) speaking on conditions of anonymity, while Karachi’s population has grown manifolds in the last 14 years of the Pakistan People’s Party’s government in Sindh, the city has failed to receive a single additional droplet of water from the Indus River. “Other water projects are also facing delays due to which the water crisis in Karachi has intensified. We started design work for the K-IV project as early as in 2007, but the mega project has since lingered in doldrums for various reasons,” the official told.

Speaking further he informed that the centre and the Sindh government had approved the K-IV project in the year 2015. The plan presented by the Sindh government to the federal government on the matter acknowledged a daily supply of 650 million gallons of water, which was to be completed in three phases by the year 2023.

The project’s Phase I consisted of 260 MGD, Phase II comprised 260 MGD and Phase III promised 130 MGD. The Sindh government started work on Phase I 260 MGD in 2016 which was to be completed in 2018. The original cost was Rs25 billion which the federal government and the Sindh government had to pay on an equal basis. However, due to the incompetence of officials, rampant corruption, and flawed project design by the Sindh government, the construction cost of the K-IV project increased from the initial Rs25 billion to Rs150 billion, rendering the project to come to a halt.

Per federal government sources, Prime Minister Imran Khan transferred the project from the Sindh government to the federal government’s Water & Power Development Authority (WAPDA) in 2020, which rebuffed the Sindh government’s designs. “The design under which the canal system was being built was declared invalid. On a transparent basis, WAPDA appointed a new consultancy firm, Techno Consult International, which designed the 650 MGD additional water supply project, prepared a new feasibility report and a fresh PC-I,” revealed the federal government source.

Read More: K-IV project designs closer to finalisation

Addressing the claim, a WAPDA official speaking on conditions of anonymity said that the plan was presented by WAPDA at a CDWP meeting in Islamabad last month. Briefing the meeting, WAPDA officials maintained that the K-IV project would be installing a pipeline network to siphon water, instead of constructing a canal system. The reason they offered was that the canal system was not profitable due to ground structure and route geography. “With the new plan, the proposed cost of the project will also come down to something around Rs200 billion. Whereas, installation of pipes will also control water theft in the future. However, the Sindh government will have to provide a quota of 650 million gallons of water from the Indus River,” the WAPDA official said, explaining the project.

According to WAPDA General Manager Farhat Kamal, WAPDA has designed the 650 MGD project for water supply in Karachi. The CDWP meeting has already approved Phase I of the project consisting of 260 million gallons per day. He said that the position of the Sindh government in the meeting was that water is not available yet so 650 million gallons daily cannot be provided.

The Express Tribune tried several times to contact the provincial minister for local government Nasir Hussain Shah for the Sindh government’s position on that matter, but he remained unavailable to comment.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2022.