The Inside Story Behind the Closure of Country’s Largest RO Plant

MITHI: The existence of resources merely does not serve the purpose but their proper optimization does. This is the case in Tharpakar area of Sindh where most of the Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants have either gone impaired or stopped desalinating groundwater.

The biggest RO plant in the district headquarter Mithi has become useless for the locals as they are still deprived of clean drinking water.

Sindh government has not released funds for the repair and maintenance work required in the filtration plants after six years of their installation.

The locals of district Tharparkar have been left at the mercy of the water tanker mafia, who are busy fleecing them.

While Talking to the News360, a local said, “ To fulfill water needs, we have to go for water tankers option, which is very expensive for us. They charge up to Rs 4,000.”

He lamented that they were unable to afford it but were compelled due to the government’s attitude towards the problem.

He asked, “How can we hire expensive water tankers after every few days?”Further, the misery does not end here as the RO plant workers are looking towards the government for the past 10 months salaries. The employees are finding it hard to make both ends meet and most of them have groaned under the weight of debts.

Irfan Majeed, who is the President of the RO Plants Workers Body comprising 700 employees, said, “ the RO plants are inoperative for the past seven months, while the workers haven’t been paid salaries for almost a year.”

Not only the biggest RO Plant in the country is not working, but several other filtration plants in the water-scarce area are impaired too.

The government has turned a blind eye to the critical issue, leaving the locals in a dilemma. The people of Tharparkar are disappointed at the apathy of the government.

As per details, to quench the thirst of the people receiving little rainfall across the year and mostly relying on underground water resources due to the absence of water reservoirs, the Sindh government had completed the installation of the big RO plant in the Tharparkar in 2014.

The government had claimed that the RO plant installed in Mithi was the largest in Asia as it could filter 2 million gallons of water daily (MGD).The filtration plant was inaugurated by the then President Asif Ali Zardari.

Besides the installation of the gigantic RO plant, the provincial government had also started a project under which some 750 RO plants in different areas of the province facing water shortage.

As many as 635 of them were to be installed in different villages of Tharparkar however only 15 of them were installed in six years’ span.

But, the government probably thought that its job was over after installation of the plants and since then, it has not paid heed to the repair and maintenance work these machines require.

News 360 learnt that most of the installed RO plants have either broken down or stopped purifying water to make it drinkable.

MPA of the constituency, Maheen Kumar, made several promises to the locals for resolution of the issue but none of them was fulfilled.