Water work: Filtration plant for flood-hit village

St Camillus Clean Drinking Water Centre will cater to over 7,000 people.

FAISALABAD:

A water filtration plant has been installed at the Christian village, Khushpur, to facilitate the residents with potable drinking water. According to tehsil officials, the filtration plant will help curb water-borne diseases in the district.

“This area desperately needed clean drinking water as there have been several gastroenteritis outbreaks here over the past couple of years,” said Health Department official Munawwar Bajwa. “We have been recommending a water treatment facility for ages and now it is finally here,” he added.

Presiding over the blessing of the St Camillus Clean Drinking Water Centre, Bishop Joseph Coutts said that Khushpur was the largest Christian village with 7,000 Catholic residents in the Punjab province. “This treatment plant is a giant step because it helps us cope with dozens of diseases. This area has been notorious for the spread of water-borne diseases and now we will be able to ensure that everyone has clean drinking water,” he added.

Coutts thanked the congregation for the invaluable resource centre and said that the plant had been an expensive but worth wile investment. “It is now up to the authorities to ensure that the facility functions properly and that the people can benefit from it,” he added.

The bishop said that the filtration plant cost Rs2.2 million and that church staff and people at the centre would be in charge of monitoring the changing of the water filters for the first year, after which the community will manage the plant on its own,” he added.“This project is an extension of the Camillian relief efforts after heavy flooding ravaged the country last year.

The congregation constructed 53 houses, organized 13 medical camps in which 2,200 patients were treated. We provided people warm clothes and bedding that would last 300 flood victims through the winter in three dioceses,” he added.Camillian Brother Mushtaq Anjum who represents the Camillian Task Force, an international relief effort of the Order of Saint Camillus, said that he was hopeful that clean water centre would help improve health conditions in the flood-affected village. “This area has been ravaged by floods and the aftermath has caused the spread of disease. Water quality was a huge concern here and even when people had plenty of it, the water was never fit to drink. Now it will be,” he added.Anjum said that heavy rains this year had destroyed nearly 200 mud houses and damaged hundreds of hectares of standing crops in Khushpur.

“The sewerage pipes were damaged during the floods and the contaminated drinking water caused a health crisis. There were increasing reports of Hepatitis and other stomach disorders”, Anjum said.Dominican Sister Parveen Lazarus of St Catherine of Siena said that the power crisis in the country would present a challenge in running the plant. “It seems our people are always struggling with resources.

Now they will have the means for clean water but that depends on how the power situation continues. We always seem to be facing a crisis with water or power and in most cases, both,” she added.

“The community elders are planning to make a schedule for collecting water when electricity is available. Still, it will aid villagers who used to get drinking water from the suburbs”, she added. Locals in the community lauded the efforts of the Camillian Task Force.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2011.