Rs15 billion project faces financial constraints

LAHORE - The Punjab government’s vital project costing around Rs15 billion to cover all open drains has been dropped due to non-productivity and financial constraints.
The project was aimed at checking the increasing incidents of minors falling in the open drains besides chocking and pollution. The project is likely to be replaced with new plan to separate sewer lines from storm water drains.
WASA in collaboration with JICA, a Japanese agency, is going to submit proposed plan to the government in January 6, 2010. By disintegrating sewerage from the open drains, sewerage waste will never go into the drains. While open drains will have plenty of space to run rain water. The proposed plan will increase the utility of both sewerage and drainage system. There are 12 main drains, 100 roadside drains and 70 secondary drains in the city.
Sources said the final consideration taking all stakeholders on board to decide the fate of covering open drain project was going on. However, sources disclosed, the latest meetings held in CM Secretariat had hinted at winding up the project. Sources privy to development revealed that government was facing critical monetary problems to execute even ongoing development projects including Ring Road, LRMT, Sialkot Motorway and under this tough situation government would not be able to allocate substantial funds for the materialisation of drain covering plan. While the departments involved in the project have termed the project high-priced in their studies. Some departments submitted their recommendations that if the open drains were covered, it will be very hard to remove the silt and various kind of solid waste from the drains. As a result, project would turn to be bane instead of boon for the public, sources said.
The Punjab government announced the project when PML-N Quaid Nawaz Sharif had conducted an aerial survey of the City some months back. The Lahore Development Authority (LDA), the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) and Traffic Engineering and Planning Agency (TEPA) have been engaged to conduct the study. JICA, an organisation of Japan, has also been involved to prepare feasibility reports for the materialisation of the project.