The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered forensic audit of the mineral water companies operating in the country, with a report to be submitted in the court on weekly basis.
Hearing a suo motu case regarding bottled water, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar ordered Punjab chief secretary and the local government secretary to appear before the court on Monday. The court also summoned chief secretaries of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday, and ordered the Sindh chief secretary to appear before the court in Karachi registry.
Punjab advocate general submitted a report to the bench which stated that the provincial government has divided the use of water into three categories. To extract water from areas facing water scarcity, the mineral water companies have to pay Rs 0.75 per litre, whereas in areas with no shortage of water, the companies are required to pay Rs 0.15 per litre to the government, according to the report.
To this, the chief justice remarked that it would rather be better not to take any money from the companies at all. Expressing his anger at the report, he noted that a company sold off water worth billions of rupees by acquiring a six acre land in Sheikhupura. “Mineral water companies are themselves quoting Rs 0.50-0.75 … these rates are not acceptable. There is no justification for charging such a meagre amount,” the top judge said.
The chief justice lamented that the country was drying up yet not even a single representative from the government showed up at a recent conference on water scarcity organised by the Supreme Court.
Published in Daily Times, October 25th 2018.