KARACHI, April 27: The City Nazim, Syed Mustafa Kamal, on Thursday gave the green signal to a $850 million project for installation of a gas-run combined power and desalination plant in Karachi under public-private partnership.

In this connection, the city nazim attended a briefing on contemporary desalination plants technology given by technical experts of Siemens Pakistan Ltd at the Defence Housing Authority’s head office.

The DHA’s Administrator, Brig Maqsood Hussein, the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board MD, Brig Iftikhar Haider, EDO Revenue Saleh Faruqi, EDO Works and Services Sarfaraz Ali Shah and officials of the city government and DHA were present on the occasion.

The nazim was told that the proposed combined power and desalination plant would desalinate 20 mgd seawater and generate 200 megawatts electricity to cater to the city’s water and power needs.

Out of the project’s total cost, $100 million will be spent on installation of desalination plant, 740 million on power plant and $10 million on project development. The project will be completed in a period of 36 months.

The city government will provide land for the plant and will also be responsible for gas supply to it.

The city nazim was informed that the DHA Combined Power and Desalination Plant, the first of its kind in the country, was a success story and would become operational by December this year.

The desalination plant using exhausted steam of power generation plant would produce desalinated water of high quality employing EMD technology and would be available at an affordable price.Experts of the contracting company said that desalination plants were being used widely in the Middle East as the best solution for procuring potable water at cheap rate.

The city nazim said the city government was poised to establish big desalination plants in Karachi to solve its water crisis.

He asked experts to work out a detailed technical proposal with all modalities for the desalination plant and present it in two weeks for approval. He also directed the EDO Revenue and the KWSB MD to prepare the project’s feasibility with the co-operation of experts.

He stressed that the proposed desalination model should cater for the availability of potable water at inexpensive rates, which the KWSB could afford easily.

Mr Kamal said the city government accorded highest priority to ensuring availability of water and power to public, unhampered.

He assured the DHA administrator that the city government would mutually work with the authority in executing all uplift works and future projects to make them a success.—PPI