West Karachi Recycled Water Project 1
Local Government & HTP Department – Government of Sindh
PROJECT INTRODUCTION
Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (“KWSB”) has mandated the Asian Development Bank (“ADB”) to be the transaction advisor in relation to an unsolicited proposal (the “USP”) for West Karachi Recycled Water Project 1 comprising the design, finance, construction, operations and maintenance and transfer of a 35 million imperial gallons per day (MIGD) wastewater treatment plant at Haroonabad near Sindh Industrial Trade Estate (“SITE”) along with a recycling plant and recycled water distribution network within SITE (“Project”).
Market Demand
Market survey shows that the present water demand of industries in SITE is ~40-50 MIGD. Due to water shortage KWSB is only able to supply around ~2-3 MIGD while the balance is fulfilled through informal water suppliers who (through unconventional means) have laid their own pipe network supplied by ground water. This practice utilizes water that can potentially be used for potable purposes and should be stopped to conserve the resource.
The informal sector via its own pipeline network provides ~30-35 MIGD of water to industry which is unreliable which is a major issue for industries and is not industrial grade and has high salinity with total dissolved solids (TDS) content of up to 6000 mg/L. • Due to the poor quality of the water major industrial units have in-house reverse osmosis (RO) plants installed to reduce the TDS of the water supplied by the informal sector to ensure smooth running of their respective industrial unit.
Current Status
KWSB with assistance of ADB has tendered the Project in accordance with international best practice, where the RFQ stage was initiated on 17 April 2023. The project has been launched on two-stage two envelope bidding process. The RFQ submission deadline is 6th July 2023.