BEIJING (January 26 2004): China has offered Pakistan desalination technology to help sanitise sea water. "This technology can bring a revolution overcoming the problem of water shortage in the country," Ruan Guo, a senior official of Tianjin Institute of Seawater Desalination, told APP.
He claimed that the seawater after its purification through the newly developed technology could be used both for drinking and agriculture purposes.
A package of this offer has been formally sent to Pakistan through its embassy in Beijing.
The Chinese company has already installed a sea water desalination plant at under construction Gwadar seaport as its pilot project to introduce the technology in the country.
This plant has been provided as a gift to Pakistan on the directives of the Chinese government.
Ruan Guo said, China is ready to co-operate in water desalination for which, a team of experts could visit Pakistan to negotiate the package.
Three decades worth of effort has ranked China among the world's few countries capable of seawater desalination.
He was of the view that the seawater could be used as a more sustainable resource to overcome water shortage on the long-term basis.
About the cost of the project, he said, "it is most cheap and reasonable as compared to other sources of water filtration."
To Pakistan, he assured his company would extend a special low cost package, keeping in view their excellent friendly relations.
To tackle a serious water shortage caused by a six-year dry spell, Tianjin, the largest coastal city in North China, started earlier this month to channel a total of 350-million cubic meters of Yellow River water to Tianjin from the Weishan Sluice Gate, 440 kilometre's away.
Because of improved technology and production efficiency, the production cost of one ton of fresh water produced from sea water has been greatly reduced from 85 US cents to the present 60 cents, which makes it more marketable than ever.
Ruan Guo said the seawater could also be made effective to tackle salinity and water-logging problem particularly in coastal areas of the country.
According to the sources, the technology could be utilised after its proper feasibility study.
To cope with the growing water demand it had become inevitable to explore possible alternate bulk water supply sources for Karachi and other major cities and the Chinese technology may be more suitable for this purpose, they added.
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