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Move to mitigate water woes

Chittagong Wasa revives project shelved for 8 years

SHAHIDUL ISLAM
The Chittagong Water and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) has taken initiative to beat the persistent water crisis in the port city, reviving a foreign -financed project that have been shelved for the last eight years.
Processes are now underway to start formally the long-felt and much-needed implementation of Madunaghat Water Supply Project from July this year at a cost of Tk 166 crore to be financed by Italy, sources at ChittagongWasa said.
They said the project is earmarked to be completed by the end of 2010 and if implemented on schedule it would be able to supply over 4.5 crore litres water a day.
Wasa currently produces only 18 crore litres against the daily demand of over 50 crore for around 40 lakh people, which is only around one-third of the huge demand.
This is one of the three big projects
of 'Short term action plan' under (Chittagong Wasa. The three projects will have total capacity to produce around 27 crore litres of water daily, sources said.
The Madunaghat project was initiated in 2001 when then Awami League government was in power but it gets shelved due to manifold reasons, including inertia of a section of officials and row over few terms and conditions.
An official on condition of ano-nymity said the Italian government wanted to cancel the agreement at one stage but they responded positively due to recent efforts by Chittagong Wasa to implement the project aims at mitigating the prolonged water woes of the people of Chittagong.
Chief Engineer M Shafiqul Islam said the Italian government has agreed to provide loan to this project under easy terms and interest pay-
able in 60 years.
He said (hey have taken all necessary steps to implement the project and hopefully it will help to a great extent in reducing the crisis of water of the people.
I he project cost was initially estimated at Tk 88-crore, which got approval from the cabinet purchase committee in September in 2003. But the project was later revised due to price hike of dollar in international market.
Sources said after completion of the Madunaghat project Chittagong Wasa would go for implementing the two other big projects under the aforesaid action plan. The projects are Karnaphuli Water Supply Project with a daily production capacity of 13.50 crore litres of water and the extended unit of Mohra Water Treatment Plant (under phase-11 of Mohra project) having a daily capacity of nine crore litres of water.