LAHORE: The Housing Department says two big projects for Lahore’s sewerage and drinking water have made “significant progress”. One of them has. The other, a plant to treat canal water for drinking, still needs approval in Islamabad, eight years after the plan first reached its lender.
The update came from a meeting on October 1 chaired by Special Secretary Housing Waqar Azim. WASA Director General Tayyab Farid and representatives of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) attended.
The sewer project has cleared all its approvals and the contract has been awarded, a department spokesperson said. About 32 kilometres of sewer line will be laid in three stretches: 12.14 km from Larech Colony to Qurtaba Chowk, 12.82 km from Gurumangat Road to Qurtaba Chowk, and 7.25 km from Qurtaba Chowk to Gulshan-e-Ravi.
The pipes will be laid with trenchless technology, which means boring under the ground instead of digging up the road above. In the crowded centre of Lahore, that matters. The spokesperson said work would begin “at the earliest” but gave no date.
The second project is a surface water treatment plant on the BRBD Canal. It will take water from the canal through a new intake and a three-kilometre pipeline, and treat 54 million gallons a day. Water meters will be installed to measure use and cut waste. Mughalpura, Shadipura, Baghbanpura, Fatehgarh and nearby areas are to benefit.
This project has not been approved yet. It will now go to the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).
Almost all of Lahore’s piped water comes from under the ground. WASA runs 594 deep tube wells that pump about 329 million gallons a day. The new plant would replace roughly one-sixth of that with canal water. The long-term plan is to raise its capacity ten times, to 540 million gallons a day.
The idea is not new. AIIB’s own project papers for the Lahore Water and Wastewater Management Project date from 2018, and the environmental studies from 2019. The project is priced at about Rs31 billion, with AIIB financing of $235 million for the wider programme.
Meanwhile the city’s old drains keep failing. This year’s monsoon exposed the drainage system from Canal Road to the Walled City, and last month sewage flooded Karim Block market.
The housing secretary has already warned contractors to deliver on time or face action. For these two projects, the public still has no start date and no finish date to hold anyone to.
Leave a Reply