Water project's land dispute settled

The 10-year-old dispute regarding the payments against 157 kanals of land acquired from the citizens for a water supply project from the Chahan Dam, the largest dam in the suburbs of Rawalpindi, has been finally resolved.

The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) have invited all landowners to receive a total of Rs980 million as land compensation.

The Rs8 billion water supply project will provide a total of 12 million gallons of water to the new and old population union councils (UCs) of the Rawalpindi district. Among these benefiting old town UCs are Adiala Road, Adiala Village, Chak Jalal Deen, Gurja, Morgah, Koth Kalan, Gulshanabad, Kalial, Lakhan, Mohri Ghazan, Dhamman Syedan and Dhamyal Chakra. All these areas suffer from severe water crises in summer.

The RDA's LAC branch has issued notices to all the landowners and invited them to the office to compensate them next week against all the lands acquired for the project.

Major water supply pipelines will be laid under this project, water pumps will be built and underground and overhead large water tanks will also be built. The project will be completed in two years with the funding of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and with the joint cooperation of the RDA and a Chinese company.