"The Netherlands has a great worldwide reputation for waste water treatment and water management in the broader sense. We would like to work with the Government of Pakistan through the platform of Economic Council of Employers' Federation of Pakistan [EFP-EC] to concoct economically feasible, socially viable and environmentally friendly solutions to the acute water crisis in the country", said Ardi Stoios Braken, Ambassador of Netherlands to Pakistan.
The special guest speaker for the occasion, Cees Vollentgoed, an environmentalist from PUM Netherlands Senior Experts, outlined a wide-array of biologically efficient and technologically advanced solutions.
Abdullah Ali Khan, Coordinator of EFP Economic Council, said, every year we lose 33 percent or 40 million-acre feet (MAF) of water. He said global warming is fast disrupting weather patterns and given Pakistan's standing as the 7th most vulnerable country to climate change. Pakistanis, he said are stakeholders of world's largest irrigation system. According to Cees, in the Land of Canals, households, industries and farms all had treatment plants installed at end of discharge nodes and a well-integrated public waste water plant system existed widely in the country. Netherlands developed these solutions about a century ago, and these can be effectively applied to address the inequitable water distribution in Pakistan if political will is created, he said.
In the end, Ismail Suttar, Chairman of EFP Economic Council, opened the floor to a house full of eagerly listening engineers and technical representatives from leather, pharmaceutical, textiles, carpets as well as agricultural sector, who hotly debated the feasibility of the proposed solutions presented by the PUM representation. -PR
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