Lahore: Private firms to detect illegal Wasa connections

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Ali Raza
AFTER the staff of Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) failed in detecting illegal water and sewerage connections across the city, the agency has hired three private companies to do their work.

Sources in Wasa said that the agency started a massive drive against illegal domestic and commercial water and sewerage connections and asked its officials to trace such connections. The sources said the agency’s officials failed to trace such connections at a massive scale while individual cases were brought to light. The sources said after failure of its officials, the agency issued advertisements in the national newspapers giving warnings people using illegal water or sewerage system of the agency to come forward and start paying charges for company’s services.

Senior officials of the agency claimed that hundreds of thousands domestic and commercial illegal water and sewerage connections were operative in the city due to which the company was incurring huge financial loss. They said illegal connections also used to overload company’s water distribution system as well as chocking of sewerage system in the provincial capital.

The officials believed that a major chunk of illegal connections especially sewerage were operative in north Lahore side as well as in other suburban localities like Shahdara, Kahna, Raiwind and etc. A senior official claimed that a large number of Kachi Abadis were also using company’s sewerage and water distribution system illegally. He said unplanned expansion of city was responsible for this fact.

Managing Director Wasa Dr Javed Iqbal said the agency hired three private companies to detect illegal commercial and domestic sewerage connections. Over a question about any estimate of illegal connections in the city, he said this was what we also want to know and the companies were hired to figure this out. He said people having illegal connections would be dealt with iron hands and the agency would impose heavy fines on such connections. Answering another question, he said the company would not disconnect any illegal connection of a Kachi Abadi or locality but the people of that locality would have to pay for the services.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=196801