Daily Times

KARACHI: The water commission has directed the chief secretary (CS) on Tuesday to transfer Rs500 million to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s account, besides restoring responsibility of construction work on Gujjar Nullah and Mehmoodabad Nullah to civic entity within 24 hours, officials of KMC have revealed.

The Sindh government, in a notification, had handed over the construction work of these nullahs, costing Rs1,780 million to the Karachi Development Authority (KDA).

During the hearing, Justice (retd) Ameer Hani Muslim, the chairman of thw water commission, directed the CS to hand over work to KMC immediately.

Justice (retd) Muslim, in his remarks, said that KDA officers who are executing work on these nullahs have shown poor performance in past projects. “They have poor professional capacity and competence. It transpired during discussion that they have engaged a consultant who himself seems to be unfit to undertake hydraulic designs efficiently. It is unfortunate that execution of work on Gujjar Nullah has been assigned to KDA, which ex-facie does not have capability of completing the project,” he remarked.

Meanwhile, the Water Commission has also directed Waseem Akhtar, Karachi mayor, to ensure shifting of civic service lines of different civic bodies running along with nullahs in the city, including Gujjar and Mehmoodabad nullahs.

The chief secretary was also directed to inspect all nullahs in city for sound execution of development of nullah schemes.

The water commission also directed local government officials to coordinate with the mayor in these development schemes so that these schemes could be developed in accordance with design and aspiration of the people of the city.

Meanwhile, the water commission also directed Karachi Water and Sewerage Board to provide water through tankers to areas where it was unable to provide same through pipeline connections.

Justice (retd) Muslim remarked that it was administration’s responsibility to ensure provision of water to each citizen. “If KWSB performed its duties in efficient manner, people would not face hardship,” he added.

The Commission head directed the KWSB to provide water through tankers on its expense to the areas facing water scarcity.

During the hearing, the local government secretary admitted that water was still being stolen from city, saying that government was making law to avert subsoil water theft.

Gujjar Nullah project office had been closed down due to lack of funds and poor policies in revamping/rehabilitating structure of nullah after working for 10 years.

The project was initiated in 2007 on direction of former nazim Mustafa Kamal. LGD and KMC were co-partners in the project.

KDA chief engineer Ram Chand has informed that work on both projects has been started. The estimated cost of both nullah projects would come around Rs2 billion and these projects would likely be completed by December 2018.

The 13.5 kilometres long drain starts from Surjani block to 11-J of North Karachi and ends in Lyari, with waste falling into Lyari River.

Revamping/rehabilitation of Gujjar nullah is crucial, service roads will provide access to nullah for future maintenance needs, provision of service roads will also restrict encroachments besides ensuring flow of nullah that will remain intact.

The drain was actually 160-feet wide but its width has now been reduced to only 30-feet owing to encroachment and land grabbing.

Nullah will have 18 feet wide roads on both sides while nullah will run with 45 feet along with construction of walls of more than three feet tall.

He informed that all connecting sewerage inputs of city areas would be disconnected and a fresh sewerage flow conduit would be constructed by side of nullah to serve purpose. Solar lighting system would also be introduced on both sides of running roads with 18 pedestrian bridges along nullah. It would be a model project.

Published in Daily Times, April 18^th 2018.