Multan City District Nazim Faisal Mukhtar has directed the engineers of Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) Multan to improve and restore sewerage system in a few days, otherwise they would be dealt with severely, as the entire city was flooded by stinking and stagnating water.
Addressing a meeting of Wasa officials here on Friday, he said that many areas, including Hafiz Jamal Road, Gulberg Colony, Writers Colony, Lakkar Mandi, Hassan Parwana Road, Tariq Road, Bhutto Colony, Silver Factory area and other localities of Multan were under deep drainage water.
He said that the people were facing a lot of hardship and were agitating against the failure of Wasa to improve the sewerage system in the city. He said that Wasa officers had done nothing to address people's grievances and such a situation would not be tolerated at all. He said that the government had released millions of rupees funds for execution of sewerage projects but the situation arising out of defective sewerage remained unchanged.
Faisal directed Wasa officers not to sit idle in their offices but to go to out and remove defects in the sewerage system.
He directed the engineers to immediately clean the blocked sewage lines and increase the number of disposal stations and pumps so as to pump out stagnant drainage water in various parts of the city. He told them that execution of Wasa development projects would be adversely affected if the sanitation conditions were not improved.
District Nazim said that he remained tehsil city nazim for four years but the city population never faced such a bad situation. He directed the Wasa officials to prepare a plan immediately to deal with the situation.
MDA Director General Mumtaz Qureshi said that the defective sewerage system had exposed Wasa's performance. He directed Wasa officers to improve their performance and efficiency otherwise action would be taken against them. He said that meetings would be arranged daily to monitor the situation. He also took serious notice of the fact that six machines purchased for cleaning sewerage lines were not being used. He directed the officers concerned to immediately utilise these machines. He said that contractors, getting contracts for installation of new tube-wells at disposal stations should also install alternative pumps to improve the sewerage situation.
The engineers of sewerage wing, on the other hand, held disposal wing responsible for the defective sewerage. He asked Wapda officials should immediately clean the blocked sewerage lines and install additional tube-wells at disposal stations to control the situation.
XEN disposal wing said that the process was going on to install additional pumps in various parts of the city.