Sindh government has decided to provide drinking water to the under-developed areas of Karachi through Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah expressed these views presiding over a meeting on RO plants and their performance on Thursday. Shah was told at the meeting that twelve RO plants are installed in Keamari and six in Lyari. Per person per day water requirement is 20 gallons.
Lyari has a population of 1 million people and the requirement comes to 20 million gallon per day (GPD). The water board provides 14 million GPD while six million gallons are provided by RO plants and still there is a shortage. Keamari has a population of 460,000 and water requirement is 9.2 million GPD. The water board provides 2.2m GPD while the RO plants provide seven million GPD.
The RO plants installed in Lyari and Keamari are designed to operate on feed water having total dissolved solids (TDS) of 40,000 mg/litre. They have the system capacity to produce 3785 m3/day of water from a feed of 7570 m3/day of 1.0 MGD.
It was pointed out that RO plants are running on Operate and Maintain (O&M) basis contract for a period from 2014 and continue till 2018 at the cost of Rs 868 million per annum. Managing Director Water Board Hashim Raza Zaidi briefed the meeting about Grid Station RO Plant and said that there is raw water shortage in Lyari because the underwater TDS level is higher than the designed limit of 35-40,000 ppm while the available TDS has been recorded at 65-75,000 ppm.
Meanwhile, Murad Shah formed body for making RO plants efficient, functional across Sindh He said that new shallow bores up to 100 ft are being made in Lyari River intake system to cater to the problem. At present, 100-150,000 gallon raw water has been taken for this RO plant and is producing product water up to 35-40,000 gallons to minimise the product water shortage.
CM directed him to develop new raw water intake system in coordination with RO plant. "Ahmed Shah Bukhari RO Plant of one million gallon is producing more than 30 percent product water," he said, adding that there was requirement of system upgrading and to increase the number of bores to enhance the product water quantity.
MD Water Board also said that the other plants in Lyari are also facing the same problems, while the RO plants of Keamari are also functioning at 30 percent production capacity. CM Sindh directed the water board to develop new intake system from sea and upgrade the plant so that maximum production could be extracted. He said that the RO plants of Sikandarabad, Wazir Mansion and Kamala where TDS is above design limit should be shifted to another location.
He also instructed to enhance skilled labour at RO project for better performance. He directed the water board to prepare a detailed recommendation paper and submit the same for approval through the local government minister. "I want to provide water to people of t water-starved areas of the city," he said.