Massive Corruption Unearthed; 20 Million To Keep Drinking Polluted Water

Online, October 2, 2013 (Newswire.com) - In Pakistan massive graft was received in award of contract to build a wastewater treatment plant to save 20 million people of its mega city Karachi from drinking polluted water.

According to details the provincial government of Sindh province of Pakistan awarded a contract to M/s ARA Joint Venture in June 2010 in collaboration with M/s ARITIM MUHENDISILK (Turkish firm) to erect a wastewater treatment plant at some 200 miles away from Karachi. It was to treat wastewater released by a cluster of 99 factories situated there before its release into the Kinjhar Lake the only resource for water supply to 20 million citizens of Karachi. So far the polluted water of that lake is directly being supplied to Karachi without any treatment. Its citizens have no choice to keep drinking polluted water till the plant starts working.

The plant was about to be operational in August 2013 but the contractors demanded another 0.4 million dollar in addition to previous cost of 0.6 million dollar to do its finishing work before putting it into operation. This demand has embarrassed the provincial government of Sindh that was expecting that plan would start working right now and people of Karachi will drink water free from pollution. On investigation it was revealed that previous government of Sindh province received huge bribe from contractor for awarding the contract to erect this plan. He was forced to give huge some as graft and now he demanded another 0.4 million dollar to make the plant start working. He is presumably under massive debt owing to purchase of machinery of the plant on credit basis. Now he wants to relieve himself from the debt before finishing the contact.

According to environmental experts of the area the actual cost of the plant is hardly 0.1 million dollar while rest of the amount of almost 0.9 million dollar of this contract was jointly minted by top government officials of Sindh province. All the provincial and federal governments of Pakistan are already notorious worldwide for their massive corruption and embezzlement of funds. As a result majority of its population is moving towards the state of absolute poverty owing to huge and persistent pilferage by its rulers, bureaucrats and politicians.

Moreover, technical experts also opined that the referred treatment plant has so many technical faults and it will collapse after one to two months of its functioning. Its main reason is usage of low quality mater in its construction. Obviously with contractor nothing might have left after giving huge amount of money to those who awarded him this contract. So he had no choice but to use poor quality raw material to construct the plant. Now people of Karachi have to pay the price of massive corruption done by officials of Sindh government and irresponsibility of contractor of the plant who should not have accepted the contract if he was asked to pay bribe.

Sindh government has clearly refused to pay extra amount of 0.4 million dollar to contractor to start the plant function. It expressed its inability because of acute financial crunch it is facing owing to massive level of leakage of public money on the back of widespread corruption in its rank and file. As a result 20 million people of Karachi still have no choice but to keep drinking polluted water coming from Kinjhar Lake. How long they will be drinking polluted water? Nobody knows about it.

For further stories of similar nature showing the massive corruption and malpractices in environment sector of Pakistan and other poor countries please visit Pollution Polluthttp://www.pollutionpollution.com/2013/09/rulers-regulators-polluters-deadly.htmlion Dot Com the only green blog reflecting true stories of brown state of green affairs. It recently revealed a deadly nexus of rulers, regulators and polluters who almost put the environment of the poor regions of the world at the verge of complete disaster.