Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) has launched 1.33 million euros European Union-funded project to determine and monitor water quality in small rivers.
The project, aimed at preventing pollution in small rivers and thereby improving water quality, will be completed in a period of three years said Council Chairman Dr Muhammad Akram Kahloon while speaking at a news conference here on Monday.
PCRWR in collaboration with Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Nepal and other South Asian states will follow the set quality standards of rivers flowing in developed countries to maintain safe and non-toxic waters in Swat, Korang, Soan rivers.
Dr Akram said that 17 locations would be selected in each river for the installation of equipment to check five levels of water standard. He said that the basic objective of developing an assessment system is to evaluate the ecological status of rivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region.
It is a step forward towards ensuing rivers quality assessment in Northern Areas and Islamabad, the PCRWR chief said, adding ASSESS-HKH represents one of the first research activities in the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan that aims at quality assessment of rivers using aquatic bio-indictors organisms.
To a question about assessment of big rivers, he said that for large river/streams four times more funds would be required.
The decision to undertake the project was taken in line with President Pervez Musharraf's directives to ensure safe drinking water to every Pakistani by 2007.
He said all these 8 countries of South Asia with Germany and Austria would have to adopt a common system for checking the water pollution in the rivers. "The amount of dissolved oxygen present in water is extremely small and there are about 9.2 mgs of oxygen per litre," he pointed out.
He further said that almost 40 percent of prevalent diseases in the country are waterborne and 20-40 percent of hospitalisations was due to these diseases.
PCRWR have selected Swan and Korang rivers from Himalayas, Ushu and Gibral rivers from Hindu Kush and Hunza river from the Karakoram region for the study, Dr Akram said.