Recovery of over Rs100 million from defaulters is one of the best milestone achieved by Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) during the year 2022.The cash-starved agency is now able to meet its expenses due to a vigorous campaign, which was directly supervised by agency’s Managing Director Ghafran Ahmed since he assumed the charge of the post in the middle of the year 2022.
The vision behind this campaign was to make the agency stand on its own feet and meet its expenses.Other than this big achievement, the agency also initiated several mega projects including day and night desalination programme, which continued without interruption before monsoon and cleared 76 km drain lines in the provincial metropolis.
Special desalination operations were conducted in special areas including Cooper Road, GPO, Nabha Road, Cordoba Chowk, One Morea, Two Morea Bridge and other areas, which are out of Wasa’s jurisdiction.During the year 2022, heavy rains were recorded in the city and the record of heaviest rain (238 mm) in the shortest time (7 hours) was also witnessed in the area of Tajpura, but thanks to the best management, the timely drainage of water was made possible.Wasa continued construction of more underground rainwater storage reservoirs during the year and two of these were completed at Sheranwala Gate and Kashmir Road, which eliminated the fear of urban flooding caused by rainwater in these areas and adjacent localities. Wasa Lahore plans to build 8 more water tanks in the future which will help save crores of gallons of water.
Wasa also launched a special awareness campaign to raise the awareness among the people that citizen should also support Wasa in the cleanliness campaign. In this regard several walks were arranged while during SMOG season Wasa contributed to reduce air pollution by making it mandatory for its officials to come on cycles to their officers instead of cars.On the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha, when everyone was celebrating Eid, MD Wasa along with his team was serving the people by clearing the blocked drains as well as ensuring un-interrupted supply of clean drinking water to the citizens.
To ensure water supply to every home in Lahore, Wasa introduced tube-well management system and banned running tubewells unnecessarily. This also resulted in saving water for future generations.As per the new management system, Wasa operated its tube wells for 10 hours a day during various timings.
This also helped the agency to reduce its enormous electricity bill. With this system, the agency saved 28 million gallons of water per day.During the year 2022, the service delivery of the agency was also improved by introduction of customer service centers as well as an active and responsive online complaint system, which was monitored by MD Wasa and other senior officials.
through an online dashboard. This has increased the satisfaction level of Wasa’s customers, which till the year reached to 80 per cent. Wasa Lahore, during the year 2022 has also completed its development schemes by 100%.A smart water metering project has also been launched during the year 2022 under which Wasa will install smart water meters. The project was launched under the Public Private Partnership Program, which has entered the final stages and the private company will start the work very soon.This project will save underground water, non-revenue water, water leakage, electricity saving and will ensure better water supply to the citizens. In the next two years, 7.5 lakh consumers will be provided with water meters, which will not only create employment opportunities but will also create new investment opportunities in the country.International delegations continued to visit Wasa during the year 2022, which included delegations from JICA Japan, Australian High Commission, International Finance Corporation, European Mission AFD, Hungarian Delegation, Budapest Water Works, National Disaster Risk Management Fund and KFW.Agency’s major expense was its electricity bill and during the year 2022, the agency planned to install solar power system at its disposal stations. In this regard, MD Wasa approved transferring Multan Road Disposal Station to solar energy as a pilot project and after its completion; the same will be introduced at all disposal stations. This move will help reduce environmental pollution and save huge amount, which the agency pay under the head of electricity bill.
