Following news appeared as a two liner in Dawn yesterday. Today Daily Times posted it as a whole paragraph. It caught my attention because it is a very positive development to use remotely monitor city’s sewrage system. The details are very sketchy in the news but apparently some sensors are being used at different spots in the city to remotely monitor sewage flow and the data is being transmitted to the monitoring agency, which in this case is Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). This agency also did a study on Lahore Rapid Mass Transit Rail Project in 1991. The e-monitoring of sewage is a part of a larger project which is titled as ‘Project for the Retrieval of Sewage and Drainage System in Lahore City’. JICA who is the stake holders in this project, want to remotely get data on progress of the project.
In a system like this alarms from sewage sensors are sent to a monitoring station which can be as simple as a laptop via GSM/mobile phone network and data can be viewed on a web browser. Alarms can also be acknowledged over the web. This system allows real time monitoring of sewage thresholds from a remote location.
Following is the complete news as it appears in the Daily Times.
E-monitoring of sewerage system begins
LAHORE: The Japanese government has started e-monitoring the city’s sewerage system, said a press statement issued by the Project Management Unit (PMU) on Monday. The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), had developed a website on the sewage system, the statement added. It said that it was for the first time that a foreign government was monitoring a project in Pakistan with the help of IT. In January 2006, the Japanese government funded a Rs 789 million project to improve the city’s sewerage system. It also provided 51 sophisticated machines and trucks for de-silting. The statement said, “Data regarding the sewerage system, de-silting, transportation as well as dumping of waste is being transmitted to the Japanese government and JICA.†staff report
If our readers update us with more information on this system then it will be highly appreciated.
References: Project for the retrieval of Sewage and Drainage System in Lahore City
As a young Pakistani, I can say that we are so sick and tired of our leadership and want new faces who can take responsibility for improving the country rather than worry about bettering themselves.
The PMU (project management unit) was formed specifically for special projects involving international cooperatoin. What i can tell is the Staff working in Punjab on these projects were trained in Singapore & Lahore by Singapore Civil Service Academy.
Online monitoring of the funds/devices funded by Japanese Govt. was a condition by Govt. of Japan and PMU has been working very well from past year or more. Independent reports say, about 40% blockage in sewerage system has been removed in past one year but they need another 1.5 year to make it clean totally and then they need to do the same paractice continously on small level to maintain the flow.
@Rafay: Lahore is part of Pakistan, and i believe its part of this blog to project good things about PK – not just bombings and terrorism. If its related to provincial thing, i will give credit to Punjab/Lahore Govt. who were able to justify and get Aid from Japan. Its quite true, that many international aid agencies trusted Punjab Govt. Projects like education/Sialkot Motorway and many more were funded overwhelmingly by different agencies while high ratio of corruption & misuse of fundings are major issues in other provinces. But i realy don’t mean, Punjab/Lahore is free of corruption, it’s still there but due to the work done by Shahabad Shareef and family – PML-Q have to overthrow them by doing more…i hope you get the sense here.
Dear Wasim
yes it is a positive news. If used properly it can be a very useful system in determining sewage leaks, pumping processes etc. From the news cutting however, it seems like it is done more to satisfy the project sponsor/stake holder, which is Japanese Govt or JICA in this case. They want to make sure the money is well spent and sewage pumps are doing their job. Like i said, in the post above, comments from our readers who are more knowledgable than me on this system will be highly appreciated.
Owais Bhai,
I know nothing Owais bhai but I do believe its a positive development, maybe we are slowly but surely on our way to creating an ‘other’ Pakistan as advocated by my website at http://www.otherpakistan.org/archive.html
Feimanallah
Wasim
Ovais Mughal,
Why only Lahore, ?? e-monitoring sewerage system ??
Why not Islamabad ??
you always come with some thing zin zin !!
Lahore will be cleaned sewerageley?????