Islamabad - The Islamabad High Court was yesterday moved against the polluted water supply to the residents of the federal capital.
The petitioner Iftikhar Hussain, who is a resident of I-10/2, prayed to the court to direct the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for improving the condition of water filtration plants in Islam to ensure provision of safe drinking water to the citizens.
In his petition, he alleged that the residents of the federal capital are forced to drink polluted and contaminated water due to negligence of the civic body. The petitioner cited chairman Capital Development Authority (CDA), director general water management cell CDA and chairman Environment Protection Agency as respondents.
He argued before the court that CDA and its water management cell installed some 28 water filtration plants in the city for provision of safe and filtered drinking water to the residents spending millions of rupees. However, he contended that at present, these plants were in dilapidated condition due to non-maintenance and most of these plants have missing taps, rusty pipes, broken tiles and garbage around them. Moreover, Hussain added that for proper functioning of a filtration plant, it is necessary to change its filters every two months but in the federal capital these filters had not been changed since installation.
He continued that as a result most of these plants were dysfunctional and supplying polluted water. “It seems the CDA has very low priority for safe drinking water. At the moment the CDA handed over the management of these filtration plants to some private persons after authorising them,” he added.
But, the petitioner maintained, the CDA and its water management cell never bothered to take water samples and test in laboratory, verifying whether or not the water conditions were safe. Therefore, he prayed to the court to direct civic body to change rusty pipes installed at filtration plants, change filters and take samples to verify quality of the water.