LAHORE: The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) has completed laboratory test of its 115 tube wells and the reports would be presented before the Supreme Court (SC) on the next hearing on Saturday, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Pakistan Chief Justice Saqib Nisar on December 28, 2017, directed WASA to collect and analyse water samples from all the tube wells in the city and ordered them to submit the laboratory report on the next hearing.
Currently, 576 tube wells are being operated by WASA to supply water to the residents while there is no record of the hundreds of other tube wells being operated in different towns and industrial units of the city.
Sources informed that besides water samples from tube wells, WASA also collected at least 278 water samples from houses which were also sent to the said laboratories to be tested.
They said that WASA preferred 105 tube wells among 115 to collect water samples which were recently installed by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
“After alarming reports of high arsenic levels in WASA tube wells, JICA in 2016 replaced or upgraded 105 tube wells in different areas of the Lahore,” they said adding that the JICA completed the project with the huge amount of Rs 2.2 billion as aid.
According to the standards, the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) level more than 1000 is considered as hazardous while the TDS level was found more than 1100 TDS from the said tube well.
However, they said that in the first phase WASA intentionally preferred the tube wells installed by JICA because officials were fully aware of the high level of contamination in the other 460 tube wells.
WASA spokesman, Imtiaz Ghauri told Pakistan Today that WASA has installed arsenic removal plants in the tube wells in which the arsenic level was high.
On a question on how WASA collected samples soon after SC’s orders, he replied that WASA had collected and sent the water samples to laboratories for tests beforehand.