The Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has rejected the initial offer of imposing charges on bottled drinking water and ordered the concerned departments to supply clean drinking water to the people without taking any charges.
At a special meeting of the Punjab Saaf Pani Authority, the chief minister discussed the status of the pilot project on clean drinking water which is currently taking place in four districts.
She has requested officials to update her daily about the situation and requested deputy commissioners, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Khushab, to take feedback from people and to ensure the water requirement of people daily, making the operations more efficient.
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The officials told the chief minister that work on 864 water filtration plants is ongoing in the province of Punjab with another 1,913 plants to be undertaken soon.
The pilot project is delivering around 10,000 bottles of 19 litres of clean drinking water per day, free of charge, to the people whose needs for clean water have been identified, across the four districts.
Early completion of 1,886 water filtering projects in the province to ensure increased availability of safe drinking water was also directed by Maryam Nawaz.
Also, 670 bottling plants and 4,020 distribution points were proposed to be set up in Punjab.
Under the plan, 335 plants will each produce 5,000 litres of clean water daily, while another 335 plants will have a production capacity of 10,000 litres per day.
The chief minister, who spoke at the meeting, said that it was the right of every citizen to have drinking water and assured that bottled water would be made available wherever it is not available.
In this regard, the government is committed to providing millions of litres of safe, healthy and quality drinking water for the houses under the Clean Drinking Bottled Water programme, she added.
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