MULTAN-Over 350,000 residents of South Punjab will get clean and safe drinking water as the Punjab Saaf Pani Company has installed 116 water filtration plants in villages of Lodhran, Hasilpur, Dunyapur, Khanpur and Minchanabad tehsils of Bahawalpur region.
The South chapter of the company installed the plants under Safe Drinking Water Program at easy-to-access places in villages of the abovementioned tehsils for the benefit of the local communities for the first time ever.
Sources disclosed that the safe drinking water programme would cover villages and settlements in 137 tehsils to provide basic necessity of life to over 56 million people in the Punjab province. As revealed in various survey reports, the underground water in abovementioned tehsils had become contaminated and contained multiple pollutants, which affected the health of locals. They had fallen victim to various water-borne diseases, which were taking toll in the form of increase in their health-related expenditures.
In order to increase safe drinking water consumption and create awareness about the hazards intake of contaminated water among local residents, PSPC-South has launched a robust awareness campaign aimed at inclining locals to use filtered water for consumption and cooking purposes.
Besides the engagement of PSPC-South’s community mobilization staff, Lady Health Workers and Health Nutrition Supervisors in the tehsils have been taken onboard through District Health & Education Departments to promote hygiene practices and consumption of filtered water among local villagers. Similarly, Radio Pakistan network (FM-101 and Medium Wave Bahawalpur and Multan) in Bahawalpur region is also being used to send across awareness messages among the communities in target tehsils.
The existing water quality is unfit for human consumption in majority regions of rural areas in the Punjab province. Those who remain impacted by lack of safe drinking water are often the most vulnerable groups in populations are women, children and extreme poor in rural/remote/marginalized communities of the province.
Realizing the gravity of situation, the Punjab government has launched Safe Drinking Water Program not only to protect water quality but also to make it available to those who lack access in rural areas of the Punjab.
GOVT CRITICAL OF ILLEGAL SOCIETIES: The divisional administration will constitute a committee consisting of representatives from public and private sectors to evaluate applications seeking permission for new housing schemes.
Chairing a meeting of district planning and design committee, the divisional commissioner said that only those projects would be given okay nod which would fulfill all the requirements. He said that a strict action would be taken against the housing schemes building commercial areas out of their boundary wall as it was an illegal act. He declared that no construction would be allowed without intense scrutiny of documents. He added that the construction plans would be approved while keeping in view if the builder had kept forth the future needs like traffic and increasing population in the plan. He directed the officials concerned to impose heavy fines on those constructing buildings without approval.
He asked the owners or builders of housing societies to turn orchards located inside their housing projects into parks instead of cutting the trees. “It will help fight climate changes,” he hoped. He said that planned housing schemes were need of the hour but no one would be allowed to establish residential schemes without the approval from the committee.