Federal Minister for Climate Change, Rana Muhammad Farooq Saeed Khan has taken serious notice of the cleanliness, garbage, mounting pollution, violation of building codes, poor or inadequate availability of safe water and sanitation issues in the federal capital.
He observed expansion of the city and its suburbs in a manner, which is not environmentally sustainable and that makes city 'climatically unresilient' and is a matter of serious concern and the trend must be checked. "The haphazard growth of the city will only expose the city infrastructure and the dwellers to the climate change-induced natural disasters. We seriously need to check the trend of federal city's growth and make it more climate-resilient so as to avoid future dangers of the climate change," the minister said.
He expressed these views while chairing second Progress Review meeting on Implementation of Climate Change Policy and Making Capital City 'A Model City' here on Tuesday. Rana Muhammad Farooq Saeed Khan said that its matter of dismay that our cities are growing unplanned and are fast becoming unclean and unmanageable due to unchecked urbanisation and population influx from rural areas.
He said people are building up costly homes, but show little care for their streets. To check this negative trend, there is strong need for awareness among such people, he suggested. The meeting was attended by Secretary Climate Change Ministry, Mahmood Alam, Director General Jawaid Ali Khan, Chairman of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) Farkhand Iqbal, CDA Director General (Water Management) Sanaullah Aman, CDA Director-General (Environment) Dr Sheikh Suleman and other senior officials of the Ministry of Climate Change and CDA.
The Minister also said that wastage of rainwater in the federal city and letting hill-torrents' water go untapped is unaffordable for the city, which is reeling under mounting water shortages, particularly during summer months. He asked the CDA chairman and the officials concerned to draw up viable and sustainable plans and take all-out measures for harvesting the rainwater that goes untapped and unutilised.
The CDA chairman informed the minister that lack funds is a major problem, which is hurting performance of the development authority. While drawing the minister's attention to the inadequate availability of the funds, he informed that CDA has not been released any funding during last 18 months. "This is a major reason, while we have not been able to implement different uplift schemes in the city," Farkhand Iqbal said.
He also informed the meeting that plans are also underway to install solar-powered tube wells at the water reservoirs around the city through which water is provided to the city and adjoining areas. "Electricity breakdowns, particularly during summer months, are nagging problems, which cause problems in supplying water to the residents of the city unhampered. However, these solar-powered tube-wells will be of great help in providing non-stop water even during peak summer days," he added.
On pointing out the mounting garbage and inadequate facilities for its handling as serious nuisance for the city, the CDA chairman informed that efforts are being taken to tackle these issues and local and international donors are also being taken on board for waste-to-energy initiatives. He also said that a five-year agreement was signed with an organised based in Belgium for waste-to-energy project that was to be built at Kuri area near Chak Shahzad. But due to financial problems the project is yet to materialise.
"The agreement is still intact and work on it can be initiated, if funds by the government are released," the CDA chairman said. The federal climate change minister assured his full support for the project and said he would take up the issue with the Prime Minister and play his role for release of the required funds.
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