By Shehzad Khan
In several provinces throughout Pakistan, including the province of Sindh, and even in Karachi -the capital-, up to 20 million people don’t have access to clean water. Most of the water found in the country has dangerous levels of coliform bacteria, which is found in human and animal feces.
According to a recent study published in the Environment International Journal: “Water pollution is one of the major threats to public health in Pakistan. Drinking water quality is poorly managed and monitored. Pakistan ranks at number 80 among 122 nations regarding drinking water quality. Drinking water sources, both surface and groundwater, are contaminated with coliforms, toxic metals, and pesticides throughout the country. Various drinking water quality parameters set by WHO are frequently violated. Human activities like improper disposal of municipal and industrial effluents and indiscriminate applications of agrochemicals in agriculture are the main factors contributing to the deterioration of water quality. Microbial and chemical pollutants are the main factors responsible exclusively or in combination for various public health problems.”
Several highly populated areas have no clean water sources, so people have to drink water from dirty pools from where cattle and pets also drink. On top of this, Pakistan suffers from climate change, and the droughts have become worse and worse with each year.
In Sindh province, 78% of ground water quality is brackish and or saline, not fit for drinking and domestic use, but due to the lack of other water sources, people use it for drinking. This, in turn, is the cause of several diseases, such as hypertension, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis etc.
As of 2007, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) issued a report titled “Pakistan’s Waters at Risk,” where it was reported that 20% to 40% of the hospital beds in Pakistan were occupied by patients suffering from water-related diseases, such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and hepatitis, which are responsible for one third of all deaths.
“Poor water and sanitation is a major public health concern. Waterborne diseases are responsible for substantial human and economic losses. These include loss of millions of working hours of productivity annually, and associated costs for health care. Reduction in the occurrence of water borne diseases will go a long way in the efforts to alleviate poverty,” according to the report.
And in 2019 the situation has not changed: “The problem is made worse by poor governance and management in the water sector. While there are laws governing water, they are often archaic, dating back to the colonial era. Other attempts to reform water management have simply added new bureaucracy on top of the existing framework, creating agencies with overlapping duties. While the adoption of the National Water Policy in 2018 has been a cause for optimism in Pakistan, its vague and sometimes contradictory wording raise concerns that the country’s water crisis will continue to worsen,” reported last month the NGO Future Directions.
The situation seems to be heading to an even worse point, last year, reports by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as well as the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) alerted that the country will reach absolute water scarcity by the year 2025.
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