Clean Drinking water to be Balochistan governments top priority: Minister

QUETTA: Provincial Minister for Public Health Engineering and Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Noor Muhammad Dummar said today (Monday) that the incumbent government was giving top most priority to provision of clean drinking water to the people, ARY News reported.

He was addressing officials of his department in Quetta after a briefing on the subject had been given to him by the staff present.

Noor Muhammad Dummar said that the government believed in serving the people of the province without any discrimination and a huge amount had been allocated in the budget of the new financial year to uplift Public Health Engineering in the region.

Earlier, a two-member commission formed to probe into non-availability of potable water in Balochistan’s Bolan district submitted its interim report in the Supreme Court on January 10.

A bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar was hearing a suo motu case related to a shortage of drinking water in Bolan district.

On Dec 14, the top court formed a two-man commission headed by Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Amanullah Kanrani to probe the water issues facing the area. Other member of the probe body was engineer Ghulam Usman Babai.

Polio in Balochistan

First two polio cases of the year 2019 were reported from Jaffarabad and Qilla Abdullah Districts of Balochistan in relation to the polio virus.

According to sources in Balochistan Emergency Operation Centre, an eight-month-old child was affected by the poliovirus in Jano Kahool area of Chaman. The second case was confirmed in a nine-month-old child in Jaffarabad.