Hyderabad:
The discharge of toxic industrial effluents in the Karachi canal continues tirelessly, posing a serious risk to the health of the inhabitants of Karachi, Thitta and Jamshoro despite several ordinances of the High Court of the Sindh and the Water Commission of the Supreme Court. A team from the Sindh environmental protection agency (SEPA) collected samples in the canal near the Kotri site area in the Jamshoro district on Thursday.
The KB, alias Karachi canal power channel, springs from the Kotri dam. This is the main source of water supply for the city and the current K-IV project also depends entirely on this channel.
In 2007, a Kotri lawyer had deposited a petition in the SHC, pleading for measures to stop the pollution of the canal by the industrialist as well as municipal, commercial and hospital wastewater. The court had ordered the provincial government to build a combined factory for effluent treatment (CEP) near the site area to stop this contamination of the fresh navigable track.
The initial PC-I of the project was approved in April 2010, at a cost of 667 million rupees. However, due to delayed completion, the cost then made up to about a billion rupees. The construction contract was given to the joint venture M / S Ara Karachi in June 2010. In September 2019, the anti-corruption establishment filed a FIR against the officers of the site who were part of the project. According to the ACE survey, the project was still incomplete and not functional this year in addition to not having the treatment capacity.
As part of an arrangement, the management of the deficient factory was given by the site service in Kati. During the visit of the visit of SEPA Imran Abbassi, the office agents of the association said that they had ceased to lead the factory because the government interrupted the release of funds. The two parties had agreed to share 50% of the costs of operations. They said that the unpaid funds had accumulated at 60 million rupees when Kati decided to call it one day more than two months ago.
The SEPA officer has also repeated instructions for industries to install in house processing factories, an order that the water commission had also adopted for all areas of the site in 2018. Abbassi reiterated the warning to industries that SEPA will initiate the action if they continued to release untreated wastewater.
