On March 24, 2021, H.E. Holger Ziegeler, Consul General of Germany along with Mr. Haji Noor Muhammad Dumar, Minister Public Health Engineering, inaugurated the DEWATS Project at Takatu Campus BUITEMS. Pro Vice Chancellor BUITEMS, Dr. Faisal Ahmad Khan, was the host, and Dr. Shafeeq ur Rehman, Vice Chancellor UoB, Mr. Nadir Gul Barech, CEO BRSP, Mr. Saleh Nasir, Secretary PHED and Mr. Muhammad Hashim, Senior Technical Advisor, (GIZ) were also present at the ceremony. Moreover, the Registrar, Deans, Directors, and other Faculty members met the guests and held a discussion on the subject of water treatment and the efforts of researchers at BUITEMS were highlighted regarding addressing this issue at different levels.
Balochistan is an arid zone with fast depleting water resources. The scarcity is unwittingly affecting the provincial capital Quetta as well, and one of the reasons is the wasteful water management. In order to turn the arid, parched fields of the area into lush green agricultural turfs, sewage water can be reutilized after decentralized wastewater treatment. In this connection, BUITEMS constructed a Decentralized Waste Water Treatment System (DEWATS) at the Takatu campus with the financial assistance of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), technical supervision of Bremen Overseas Research & Development Association (BORDA) Germany and operational supervision of Balochistan Rural Support Program (BRSP).
Subsequently, a technical team lead by Prof. Dr. M. Naeem Shahwani keenly supervised and studied the whole process; and by the virtue of technical training organized by BORDA Germany built a scale-pup subject facility by replicating it in different offices and residential colonies of Quetta city. Furthermore, a complete curriculum is also developed on DEWATS, which will be included and taught at the graduate and postgraduate levels in the departments of Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Environmental Sciences at BUITEMS.