Rs4m allocated for maintenance of tankers

Officials say daily complaints reduced from 350 to 150 in capital

ISLAMABAD:

Capital Development Authority's (CDA) Water Management Wing has allocated Rs4 million for the maintenance of water tankers to address water supply complaints in a timely manner.

Deputy Director General (DG) Water Management Sardar Khan Zimri announced that a tender in that regard will be floated within national dailies in the next few days. The repair work on the water tankers will commence in the workshop of the Machinery Pool Organization (MPO), he said. The amount would be spent on the repair of essential spare parts of tankers including tyres, tubes and flippers, he said.

He said the authority had recently added eight vehicles to supplement the water tanker fleet after necessary repair and maintenance work to improve water supply in sectoral areas.

Currently, the wing possessed a fleet of around 34 water tankers to address water supply complaints from the residents, he said.

"The authority is supplying water regularly as per available sources and water management wing had increased water two million gallons per day on directions of authority's chairman to avoid water shortage in the holy month of Ramazan," he noted. He said CDA through various measures had overcome the water shortage issue. He added, “Earlier, there were around 350 daily complaints but nowadays they have been reduced to 150. Similarly, a helpline was set up for protecting water from wastage, and challans were issued to violators.”

He said citizens may report the water leakage at any time on WhatsApp number 03357775444 and added that upon inquiry water tankers supply were functional in all the sectors. Zimri said an online open court on water supply issues in areas falling within municipal limits of Islamabad were being held on a weekly basis live on CDA’s official Facebook account from 3pm to 5pm.

The deputy director-general water management said, “In order to improve performance of field staff and monitor the vehicles, CDA management had installed a modern tracking system to monitor them with the help of a single dashboard.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2022.