The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has miserably failed to materialise its plan for providing clean drinking water in the capital.
The authority has installed only 10 filtration plants, which were insufficient to meet the demand of safe drinking water especially in the prevailing water crisis.
A survey conducted by the Business Recorder revealed that a large number of women and children were queuing for many hours to get some potable water from low pressure filtration plants.
The government is implementing a project of filtration plants' installations all over the country with the sole aim to provide safe drinking water to the citizens.
It was witnessed in localities including G-6, G-8, G-9, G-10 and G-11 that people have to queue for many hours in the scorching heat waiting for their turn and many returned without water.
Talking to this scribe, a filtration plant operator conceded that there was very low pressure of water due to leakage in the pipeline at certain places.
Requesting anonymity, he said the CDA was paying no attention towards repairing faulty pipelines and high-ups were putting all blame on them.
These filtration plants are also in miserable condition with poor drainage facilities. Surprisingly, all the taps of some plants were missing just after eight months of the installation.
It is pertinent to mention that recent reports of microbiological and chemical tests of water samples, collected from newly installed water filtration plants show that 40 per cent of those plants provide unsafe drinking water to the consumers.
According to a report launched by a non-governmental organisation - The Network for Consumer Protection - the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) laboratory reports have revealed that the water provided by the four out of those 10 plants was not fit for human consumption on bacteriological grounds.
According to the report, the plants that are providing unsafe drinking water are installed in F-11/4, G-7/4, F- 6/1 and I-8/3 localities of the federal capital.
Residents of Islamabad have demanded of the government to ensure proper functioning of these newly built plants worth millions of rupees.