Water filtration plants: Surprise inspection turns CDA chief’s smile upside-down

The run-down plant is apparently one of the CDA’s better-maintained ones.

ISLAMABAD:

A visit to a local water filtration plant resulted in an unfiltered shock for the chairman of the capital’s civic agency.

On Tuesday morning, after attending a dengue prevention awareness walk held at Fatima Jinnah Park, the CDA chairman decided to pay a surprise visit to the nearby CDA-run public facilities. He found one adjacent to the park’s Mehran Gate — a water filtration plant.

As the chairman’s caravan reached the facility, the smiles left over from the cheery morning event vanished. After making his way through six-inch-high wild grass, the chairman and his team reached the filtration plant. The situation worsened after the chairman opened the door for the plant’s control room.

All he found was a cot, most likely installed by the plant’s operator to take on-the-job naps.

“Why don’t we maintain such facilities properly when we have resources and enough staff?” the chairman questioned the officers accompanied him.

He then checked the filtration plant’s inspection report — hanging inside the control room — and found it maintained and satisfactory.

After giving some directions, he went back to CDA headquarters, and junior CDA officials breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thankfully, the chairman checked a filtration plant that was not as run-down conditions as other plants across the city,” commented an official, who was with the chairman during visit.

Not really filtered

A monitoring report on drinking water filtration plants in Islamabad compiled by Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources in 2013 also unearthed some eye-opening facts.

The council examined 28 of the 33 CDA water filtration plants in the city. Only six had water safe for human consumption, while the other 22 were had microbiological contamination beyond permissible standards. Drinking water from these sources put the consumer at risk of gastroenteritis, cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid, according to the report.

The six safe water filtration plants are at Pakistan Secretariat, and sectors I-8/2, G-11/2, G-11/3, F-10, and I-8/1.

Outsourcing fail

As said by the CDA chairman, why has the agency failed to ensure hygienic conditions at-and-around filtration plants, when it has enough resources and manpower for the purpose?

A senior officer said it is because the CDA operates this facility through private contractors.

In the recent past, after the prime minister took notice of the contaminated water at these plants, the authority tried to retake control of these plants.

But the contractors, who in a bid to save money do not bother to deploy enough staff to maintain the plants, moved the courts. “For some days, the CDA pursued the issue in court, but later abandoned the idea to run filtration plants with its own resources, said the officer.

CDA spokesperson Asim Khichi said the chairman has directed staff to ensure proper upkeep of water filtration plants and will begin checking each plant in person soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2014.