Senior Advisor to Chief Minister Punjab, Sardar Zulfiqar Ali Khan Khosa has said that a comprehensive Punjab Water Policy would be evolved to provide clean drinking water to the people of the province and strategy, planning and financial resources would be made available for provision of clean drinking water.
He expressed these views during a briefing given by the Housing, Urban Development and Public Health Engineering Department regarding Punjab Drinking Water Policy. Zulfiqar Ali Khosa said that after the 18th amendment, environment pollution is now the responsibility of the provinces and Punjab Assembly will undertake legislation for environmental pollution and specially provision of clean drinking water to the masses.
The meeting was informed that polluted water is being used by a major chunk of the population in the province and poisonous articles of arsenic have been detected in the water of Lahore, Kasur, Multan, Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur while one lakh and sixteen thousand children die every year in the province due to polluted water. Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa informed that provision of clean drinking water to the citizens is of fundamental importance and the participation of people in these schemes would be ensured and monitoring system of water supply schemes would be evolved.
He further said that currently Wasa and local government institutions are providing water while under Punjab Water Policy, Wasa and other local government institutions would make investment for better storage facilities of water while water purification scheme would also be implemented with the co-operation of Wasa.