LAHORE: Eighty-three roadside water tanks and eight main underground water tanks have been completed across 51 cities under the Punjab Development Programme (PDP), Local Government Minister Zeeshan Rafique said while chairing a review meeting at the Civil Secretariat, according to an official statement.
Municipal Officers Infrastructure (MOI) and Assistant Project Directors (APD) from across the province joined the meeting through video link.
The minister commended the entire team for completing the roadside water tanks in full, and pressed for the remaining 14 main water tanks to be built by September. He said 88 drains had also been completed at a hundred per cent under the programme.
Zeeshan Rafique said Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif had approved the provision of machinery to every city under the PDP to cope with rains. So far, 91 jetting and suction machines and 77 desilting units have been supplied to various cities.
The Programme Management Unit (PMU) has received 20 dewatering sets, with a further 45 units due in September. The final delivery of 30 new dewatering sets will be completed in October, taking the total to 95.
Machinery of this quantity had been purchased for the first time to deal with urban flooding, the minister said, adding that the induction of a modern fleet had increased the operational capacity of local government institutions during the monsoon season. He directed that the newly received machinery be properly maintained.
Punjab’s larger cities have repeatedly struggled with monsoon accumulation, and the causes tend to be mechanical rather than mysterious: choked drains that were never desilted before the rains, sewerage lines carrying solid waste, and too few pumps to clear low-lying pockets once water collects. Jetting and suction machines are used to clear blocked lines; desilting units remove accumulated sludge from drains; dewatering sets pump standing water out of underpasses, depressions and inundated neighbourhoods.
That is the logic behind pairing civil works — the tanks and drains — with a machinery fleet distributed to municipal bodies rather than concentrated in one or two large cities.
The minister’s instruction on upkeep points to the recurring weakness in such procurements. Fleets of this size require servicing schedules, spare parts inventories and trained operators at the municipal level, and equipment that is out of service by the following monsoon delivers none of the promised capacity.
With 14 main water tanks still outstanding and 75 dewatering sets yet to be delivered, the programme’s remaining timeline runs to October — past the tail of this year’s monsoon and into preparation time for the next.
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