1
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has made a strategy to ensure supply of drinking water throughout the province at affordable rate in the next 10 years.
The strategy was shared with participants of a public health engineering department meeting held at the Civil Secretariat here on Wednesday.
The meeting, which was chaired by public health engineering minister Shah Farman, discussed ways and means to execute the strategy.
The department’s secretary and XENs, chief engineers, and superintending engineers from all over the province also attended the meeting.
According to a statement issued here, it is was the second consecutive meeting of its kind.
It said predominant source of drinking water in the province was groundwater, but due to the persistent withdrawal and dwindling re-charge process, its resources were depleting rapidly at many places.
The statement said it was high time to realise the situation and ‘invest in future’.
The minister said the PTI government believed in investing in human development in order to restore human dignity.
He said the strategy focused on extending water services to the rural population of the province as 21 percent of rural areas lacked access to improved source of water.
The minister said more than 90 percent urban population had access to potable water.
He said the provincial cabinet had already approved the Drinking Water Policy 2015 under which drinking water had been recognised as a basic human right.
“It’s now the responsibility of the public health engineering department to ensure the police’s implementation,” he said.
The minister said he had already directed the relevant officials of the department to produce detailed lists of drinking water schemes by Dec 3, 2015. He said he would inspect all drinking water facilities in the province to ensure they’re fully functional.
A source privy to the meeting said the government had yet to decide about water distribution stations, water charges and water distribution timings.
Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2015
