LAHORE: Construction of 96 drains and 94 underground water tanks has been completed in 51 cities across Punjab under the Punjab Development Programme, Local Government Minister Zeeshan Rafique said on Wednesday.
The minister was speaking at a review meeting of the programme at the Civil Secretariat. Local Government Secretary Zaid Bin Maqsood and Special Secretary Shahid Zaman Luck attended, while Municipal Officers Infrastructure and Assistant Project Directors of the cities concerned joined through video link.
Mr Rafique said one further drain and six water tanks would be completed during September, taking the count to 97 drains and 100 tanks.
The next phase of the programme will focus on the construction and rehabilitation of disposal stations, with work already under way in 23 cities. The minister said the new stations would help enhance the capacity of urban rainwater drainage systems.
Disposal stations are the pumping points that lift accumulated stormwater and sewage out of low-lying urban pockets. In most Punjab cities the drains and tanks built so far can only move water as fast as those stations can discharge it, which is why the sequencing announced on Wednesday matters more than the raw numbers.
The minister said preventing urban flooding was a major focus of the development programme, adding that work was also under way on the construction of streets, roads and sewerage systems in cities.
He said the government was moving at a fast pace to implement the “Maryam Nawaz’s Sohna Punjab Vision”, under which parks will be developed in phases while streetlights are installed and rehabilitated.
Urban flooding has been the recurring failure of Punjab’s municipal system through successive monsoons, with drainage capacity in secondary cities designed for a smaller population and a lower rate of paved-over ground than exists today. Underground tanks address a second problem alongside drainage, holding rainwater rather than dumping the whole load into an already saturated network.
The value of the completed works will be judged next monsoon rather than this month. For residents of the 51 cities covered, the practical question is whether the new drains connect to a disposal station that can actually clear them, and the answer to that arrives with the 23-city phase now beginning.
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