HYDERABAD:
The discharge of toxic industrial effluent into the Karachi Canal continues unabated, posing a serious health hazard to the people of Karachi, Thatta, and Jamshoro despite multiple orders from the Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court’s Water Commission. A team of the Sindh Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) collected samples from the canal near Kotri SITE area in Jamshoro district on Thursday.
The KB Feeder canal, aka Karachi canal, springs from Kotri barrage. It is the main source of water supply for the city and the ongoing K-IV project is also completely dependent on this canal.
In 2007 a lawyer from Kotri had filed a petition in the SHC, pleading for measures to stop the canal’s pollution by the Industrial as well as from the municipal, commercial and hospital wastewater. The court had ordered the provincial govt to build a Combined Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) near the SITE area to stop that contamination of the fresh waterway.
The project’s initial PC-I was approved in April 2010, at a cost of Rs667 million. However, due to delayed completion the cost later jacked up to around Rs one billion. The construction contract was given to M/S ARA Joint Venture Karachi in June, 2010. In September 2019, the Anti-Corruption Establishment lodged an FIR against the SITE officers who were part of the project. As per the ACE’s investigation, the project was still incomplete and non-functional by that year besides lacking the treatment capacity.
Under an arrangement the deficient plant’s management was handed over by SITE department to KATI. During in charge of SEPA Imran Abbassi’s visit, the association’s office bearers narrated that they stopped running the plant because the govt halted release of funds. The two sides had agreed to share 50% cost of the operations. They claimed the unpaid funds had accrued to Rs60 million when KATI decided to call it a day over two months ago.
The SEPA’s officer also repeated instructions to the industries to install in house treatment plants, an order which the Water Commission had also passed for all the SITE areas back in 2018. Abbassi reiterated warning to the industries that SEPA will initiate action if they kept releasing untreated wastewater.
