Malik Mehar Ilahi, the Advisor to the caretaker Chief minister, held a meeting with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Caretaker Chief Minister Muhammad Azam Khan on Thursday to discuss the much-awaited greater water supply scheme for Peshawar city. The scheme is a critical project that will provide clean drinking water from the under-construction Mohmand Dam to the households in the city and its suburbs. The Chief Minister has pledged his full support for the project.
The project, which has been stalled for over two decades, is set to be supplied with clean drinking water from the under-construction Mohmand Dam. To provide the water to a treatment plant, a one-kilometer tunnel is required where it will be purified and filtered before being supplied to Peshawar district. According to the advisor, the project will provide 294 million gallons of water per day.
The underground water level in Peshawar has been decreasing daily, and it has already reached a dangerous level. If the water supply project is completed, it will solve the water scarcity problems for the growing district population for a long time.
The CM has assured that every effort will be made to start and complete the project as a priority. The provincial government had previously proposed a clean drinking water supply project for Peshawar from the under-construction Mohmand Dam in 2021. The project will cost Rs107 billion, and the provincial government has requested financial support from the center.
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The estimated cost of the project is Rs107.55 billion, which the province cannot afford on its own. A plan to supply clean water from Mohmand Dam to Peshawar has been sent to Islamabad, stating that the expenses to be incurred on it should be borne by the Centre or the provincial and federal governments together. Another plan has been proposed to supply water from Jabba Dam to Hayatabad and Khyber tribal district while clean water will be provided from the under-construction Mohmand Dam for the rest of Peshawar.
In the past, when Haji Ghulam Ali was the district nazim of Pehawar, he proposed a gravity water supply scheme from Warsak Dam to Peshawar. However, it did not materialize due to a lack of funds and support from the provincial government, which refused to fund the vital water supply scheme.
