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Sindh CM says govt providing drinking water to 16.567m population’
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Murad says govt has plan to establish thoroughly professional Teachers Training Academy
KARACHI: The Sindh government through Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department provides drinking water to 16.567 million population which is 53 percent while drainage schemes cover 12.513 million which constitutes 40 percent of the population.
This was disclosed in a meeting held under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah here at the CM House. This was the fourth consecutive meeting on the provision of safe drinking water to the people.
The meeting was attended by Minister Fayaz Butt, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, P&D Chairman Mohammad Waseem, CM’s Principal Secretary Sohail Rajput, PHE Secretary Tamizuddin Khero and other officers.
The chief minister said that the Public Health Engineering Department was most important in terms of provision of drinking water and responsible for the provision of drainage facility. “Just PHED has to manage it in the larger interest of the people, otherwise you have vast network and schemes,” he directed the minister and the secretary.
QUANTITY OF GROUND WATER: Secretary Tamizuddin Khero said that the total quantity of water required for drinking purpose in existing schemes of the department was about 340mgd, out of which 122mgd is groundwater and the remaining 218mgd was surface water. On this, the chief minister said that there was further need of assessing the quantity of groundwater and testing its quality.
Briefing the chief minister, the PHE secretary said that the government provides water supply to 16.567 million population of rural and urban areas of the province, except Karachi and Hyderabad which become to 53 percent of the population. Similarly, the department had developed drainage network covering 12.513 million population which comes to 40 percent of the total population of the province.
It may be noted that urban areas of Karachi and Hyderabad have their own drainage and water supply systems and organisation. Therefore, their facilities have not been counted or included here. According to the new population census, a total population of the provinces comes to 27. 888 million in which 24. 91 million or 52 percent is urban and 22. 975 million or 47.98 percent.
The PHE Department serves 31. 243 million population which is 65.24 percent all over Sindh. Population Minister Fayaz Butt said that there was sweet water zone where 184 urban water supply schemes, including 13 RO plants are working. This shows that through 184 water supply schemes, including 13 RO plants drinking water is provided to 7.922 million population living in the rural areas.
The chief minister said that the groundwater quality in the sweet water zone was also deteriorating for which separate measure would be adopted to improve its quality. Appreciating the vast network of services of the PHE Department in water supply and drainage, he said that he has reports that various schemes of PHED need to be rehabilitated.
EDUCATION SYSTEM: In a separate meeting at the CM House, Chief Minister Murad reiterating his commitment to overhaul exiting education system in public sector has constituted a committee to review the Sindh School Education Standards and Curriculum (SSES&C) Bill-2105 and give recommendations for necessary amendments.
The meeting was attended by provincial ministers Jam Mehtab Dahar and Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Principal Secretary Sohail Rajput, former education secretaries Fazal Pechuho and Aziz Uqaili, provincial secretaries Sohail Akbar Shah, Asif Hyder Shah and other officers.
The chief minister said that he has taken a number steps to improve the education system but it seems the entire system needs to be overhauled and reformed for producing better results. He said that the text was not up to the mark, teachers were not properly trained, classrooms or schools lack proper facilities and might be there was lack of motivation.
He said that the cabinet has decided to regularise the services on NTS pass contract teachers. That is fine but the number of teachers working in Sindh are around 150,000 even than education is not improving as per numerical strength of our teaching staff. He said that he has plan to establish a top-class thoroughly professional Teachers Training Academy responsible for designing training programmes for teachers.
A parallel curriculum council would also be established to develop the content of the textbooks according to ground requirements and parallel to the international level. He suggested to link all promotions and facilities of the teachers to their qualifications, training and expertise and their professionalism. The teachers who fail to qualify training programmes would be taken out of teaching process.
The teachers would be given three opportunities to quality each and every course. These in-service courses would be an on-going training process, he said. Murad also assigned the task to the education department to establish the training academy with a well-reputed organisation within next four years. When the academy would start functioning the training programmes would be started.
