The Punjab government plans to install more than 150,000 smart water meters across Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Faisalabad by 2029 as part of a broader effort to improve water management and address the province’s steadily declining groundwater levels. The decision was reviewed during a meeting chaired by Secretary Housing Punjab Noor ul Amin Mengal, where officials discussed different water meter models along with ongoing groundwater recharge projects being carried out across the province. According to officials from the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), a total of 1,509,288 water meters are eventually required across all of Punjab, with 150,900 of these specifically earmarked for Lahore, Faisalabad, and Rawalpindi by the 2029 target date, giving a sense of just how large the province wide metering gap remains even as the three biggest cities take priority.
Mengal directed authorities to complete the water metering projects in the three major cities, along with other districts, as quickly as possible, framing the rollout as an urgent priority rather than a long term aspiration. He explained that the smart metering system would rely on automated readings, removing the need for staff to physically visit properties to record consumption, a shift he said would make the entire billing process more transparent for consumers while reducing opportunities for manual error or manipulation in how usage is recorded. The system is being built around modern technology that WASA officials described as capable of significantly changing how water utilities in Punjab track and manage consumption data going forward, moving the province away from a manual reading model that has long been criticised for inefficiency and inconsistency.
The same meeting was also briefed on the province’s parallel groundwater recharge efforts, with officials confirming that work on 70 recharge wells is currently underway, of which 20 are already fully operational and functioning as intended. Separate recharge well projects are progressing in multiple cities, with 40 wells planned for Lahore, 25 for Multan, and five for Faisalabad, reflecting a deliberate effort to spread groundwater conservation infrastructure across several of Punjab’s major urban centres rather than concentrating it in a single city. Authorities have set a target of conserving 11.4 million gallons of water annually through these recharge wells alone, a figure that officials are treating as a meaningful contribution toward addressing the province’s broader groundwater depletion problem, which has worsened considerably in recent years due to unchecked extraction and inadequate replenishment.
Mengal directed officials to expand the scope of the groundwater recharge wells further and to incorporate water metering and rainwater harvesting into the province’s comprehensive water management plan, signalling that the smart meter rollout is intended to function as one piece of a larger, more coordinated strategy rather than a standalone initiative. The meeting also touched on water conservation measures used in other countries, with WASA officials noting that relatively low cost water meters would likely be sourced from other countries in the region to keep the overall cost of the rollout manageable. Whether Punjab can hit its 2029 target for the three major cities, let alone the province wide figure of over 1.5 million meters, will depend heavily on how quickly procurement, installation, and integration with existing WASA billing systems can be scaled up in the years ahead.
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