QAU spends almost Rs.100,000 daily to purchase water

Yasir Ilyas & Sohail Rashid

ISLAMABAD, July 5, 2010: Higher Education Commission (HEC)’s top-ranked Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) is facing a severe shortage of water and it has to pay Rs.100000 to fulfill its daily water needs.

The sources in the University on the condition of anonymity told INFN that CDA is bound to supply 400,000 gallon of water to university for its daily usage but in actual CDA is just providing 50000 gallons of water after a gap of 48 hours. In other words CDA is providing 24 times less water than the need of the university, as the need of water in the university rises to 1.2 million gallons after 48 hours.

The source further said that to meet this shortage university administration has to purchase 50 tankers of water every day to keep its business running, so university management has to pay Rs.100000 as per tanker charges are Rs.2000.

There are about 22 departments in the university. Other than these departments, there are five housing colonies named colony A, B, C, D, and AB Shahdara Colony. Collectively these colonies have a population of about 2000 employees with their families. The number of non-resident students in 22 departments is approximately 9000 in each shift and besides it there are about 3200 students living in eight hostels of the university.

According to details the water reservoir tank of the university has the capacity of 50000 gallons and it needs to be filled eight times a day and for the purpose university needs 24-hour smooth supply of water from its supply lines. About 200 gallons of water is consumed in the eight hostels of the university.

University has three major supply lines of 36-inch, 48- inch and 18-inch diameter and these lines take water from Simly Dam, Shahdara and Korang streams. Out of these three supply lines, two have been closed and only the one having a diameter of 36-inch is functional which carries water to university from Simly dam after a gap of 48 hours.

The official strictly denied the news of supply of water to the university from the Khanpur Dam, which were published in different newspapers previously.

The Official said that management is bound to purchase water from the CDA tankers, which bring it from G10/4 and about 50 tankers hardly meet the need of the university.-- INFN