Hyderabad:
The discharge of the toxic industrial wastewater in the Karachi channel continues unabated and poses a serious health hazard to the population of Karachi, Thatta and Jamshoro despite several orders from Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court’s Water Commission. A team of Sindh Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) collected samples from the channel near the Kotri site area of Jamshoro district on Thursday.
KB Feeder Canal, alias Karachi Canal, jumps from Kotri Barrage. It is the most important source of water supply to the city, and the ongoing K-IV project is also completely dependent on this channel.
In 2007, a lawyer from Kotri had filed a petition in SHC, asking for measures to stop the channel’s pollution of the industrial as well as from the municipal, commercial and hospital wastewater. The court had ordered the provincial government to build a combined wastewater treatment plant (CETP) near the site area to stop this pollution of the fishing waterway.
The project’s original PC-I was approved in April 2010 at a price of RS667 million. Due to delayed completion, the costs were later crushed up to around Rs one billion. The building contract was given to M/S ARA-Joint Venture Karachi in June 2010. In September 2019, the anti-corruption established a four against the officers who were part of the project. According to ACES study, the project was still incomplete and non-functional in that year in addition to lacking treatment capacity.
According to a scheme, the deficiency management’s management was handed over by the Site Department to Kati. During the responsibility of Sepa Imran Abbassi’s visit, the association’s office carriers told them to stop running the facility because the government stopped the release of funds. The two sides agreed to share 50% costs of the operations. They claimed that the unpaid funds were accrued to RS60 million when Kati decided to call it a day over two months ago.
Sepa’s officer also repeated instructions to the industries to install in houseworking facilities, an order that the Water Commission had also passed for all site areas back in 2018. ABBASSI repeated warning to the industries that SEPA will initiate action if they continued to release untreated wastewater.
