LAHORE: The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) has made a wrong claim of recent record-breaking rain in the city of Lahore, said the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) sources.

The WASA had announced on July 12 that 30 years record of rain has been broken in the city of Lahore. According to WASA, the city of Lahore had received 315 millimetre rain on that particular day, which was carried by both the electronic and print media by and large.

However, the PMD data suggests that maximum rain on July 12 was not more than 100 millimetre in the city. Well-placed PMD sources told this scribe that WASA had no facility of rain recording gauges 30 years ago and the Met Office had installed them some 10 years back on WASA’s request. How WASA can compare the July 12 rain when it has no previous data of last 30 years, they wondered.

It is also worth noting that PMD data suggests that rain on the Jail Road was not more than 69 millimetre on July 12 while WASA had claimed 152 millimetre on the same day at the same spot.

The sources said a similar situation had surfaced last year when the then caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi had adopted WASA claims and retreated from the same later when PMD had pointed out difference with PMD’s data. They added that the issue was also raised before the sitting Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz a day earlier.

According to the sources, the fundamental difference of gauging rainfall between PMD and WASA was that the PMD was gauging rainfall on the basis of last 24 hours data while WASA was determining the quantity of water on the basis of a spell of rain at a given time. Furthermore, they added, since WASA was not bound to report its data with World Meteorological Organization (WMO), therefore, it has not been taken seriously worldwide. All the more WASA was reporting excessive rain simply to justify its inefficiencies towards handing rainwater from the streets due to multiple factors, they stressed.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024