Hyderabad:
The discharge of toxic industrial effluents in the Karachi channel continues incessantly, which represents a serious health danger for the people of Karachi, Thatta and Jamshoro despite multiple orders of the Superior Court of Sindh and the Water Commission of the Supreme Court. A team from the Environmental Protection Agency of SENDH (SEPA) collected samples from the channel near the Kotri site area in the Jamshoro district on Thursday.
The KB feed channel, also known as the Karachi channel, springs from Kotri’s bombardment. It is the main water supply source for the city and the current K-IV project also depends completely on this channel.
In 2007, a Kotri lawyer had presented a request in the SHC, asking for measures to stop the pollution of the channel by industrial and municipal wastewater, commercial and hospital. The Court had ordered the provincial government to build an combined effluent treatment plant (CETP) near the site area to stop that river road pollution.
The initial PC-I of the project was approved in April 2010, at a cost of RS667 million. However, due to late completion, the cost then increased to around RS one billion. The construction contract was granted to M/S Ara Joint Venture Karachi in June 2010. In September 2019, the Anti -Corruption establishment presented a FIR against the site officers who were part of the project. According to ACE research, the project was still incomplete and not functional for that year, in addition to lacking the treatment capacity.
Under an agreement, the department of sites delivered the management of the poor plant to Kati. During the visit of Sepa Imran Abassi, the bearers of the association’s office narrated that they stopped executing the plant because the government arrested the release of funds. The two parties had agreed to share a cost of 50% of the operations. They claimed that unpaid funds had accumulated RS60 million when Kati decided to call it a day ago two months ago.
The SEPA officer also repeated instructions to the industries to install home treatment plants, an order that the Water Commission had also approved for all areas of the site in 2018. Abassi reiterated the warning to the industries that they know will initiate actions if they continued to release unwanted wastewater.
