TOBA TEK SINGH-The Municipal Committee has refused to take the control of the newly completed water supply scheme of Public Health Engineering Department (PHED).
The pipeline has been laid from Trimmu Headworks for supply of water to the Toba city. Addressing a press conference in his office, MC Chairman Ch Ghulam Nabi said that presently, the MC collected only Rs50 per month or Rs600 per year only as water fee from each water supply connection holder. If the burden of Rs50 million as recurring expenditures per year was put on MC it will have to raise the water fee to Rs500 per month or Rs6,000 per year and citizens will never be able to bear this highest cost of water supply, he said. So the only solution was that the provincial government provide all the expenses otherwise MC would not take the project into its control, he said.
He blamed that hurdles were being created by the government departments in the functioning of MC as he belonged to opposition party PTI. He added that without obtaining NOC from MC, various departments were digging and breaking roads and streets with the excuse of doing work on their own development schemes. As a result, the pipelines burst and water supply to localities of the city was effected which caused protests of citizens against the MC, he said. He announced that the MC would construct a multi-story parking plaza while soon a grand anti-encroachment drive would be started in the bazaars.
MC chief officer Rana Muhammad Shahid and PTI councillors were also present in the press conference.
Meanwhile, MC opposition leader Umer Farooq Bajwa who belongs to PML-N blamed that the MC had wasted Rs3 million on the renovation and paintings on walls of just a railway underpass but it had failed to put covers on manholes in which often children fell in the localities.
In his address, he added that the money must have been spent on the repair of broken roads and streets and maintenance of choked sewerage system of the city. He also criticised the chairman for failing to supply the potable water to the city. He said that citizens were forced to fetch water to their homes from far areas due to non supply of water by the MC but the chairman was refusing to take control of the recently completed mega water supply project.
The ruling party councillors refuted the allegation levelled by opposition leader, and said that PML-N government was creating hurdles in the way of MC working.