The Department of Public Health Engineering in Lower Dir district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has been left almost bankrupt due to non-availability of funds.
Sources in the department told The Express Tribune that the water supply schemes destroyed in 2010 devastating flash floods as well as last year’s floods are still waiting to be restored as no funds are available for the purpose.
“In August last year, flash floods washed away many tube wells in the district. Similarly, some tube wells are damaged and cannot pump water. However, these pumps have not been replaced or repaired due to non-availability of funds,” said an official.
“The situation has forced locals to collect money on their own and fix some of their tube wells,” he added, while requesting anonymity. He said the department has not paid its contractors millions of rupees for the past one year. “As a result, the contractors are not willing to repair the broken machinery of these water supply schemes,” he observed.
He said most of the water pumping stations along the Pankora River were left destroyed in last year’s flash floods while some schemes were destroyed in the devastating floods of 2010 and are yet to be restored.
“There are 1.5 million people living in the district and tube wells were established to supply potable water to the urban areas of the districts,” he said, adding that local residents face great hardships due to the non-availability of drinking water in the area.
The residents demand that the provincial government and the concerned ministry take notice of the situation and provide funds on an emergency basis for the restoration of these tube wells.
Currently the people of Khal, Tormang, Hajiabad, Rabat, Timergara, Talash and Rani area are facing scarcity of potable water, they said, adding that some of them have collected money on self-help basis and repaired the broken tube wells.
The reconstruction of all the badly damaged tube wells is, however, not possible for them. This system can only be restored by the government, they added.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 17th, 2023.
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