Clean water insufficiency, where do we stand.

AuthorAhmed, Khalil

Byline: Khalil Ahmed

Potable water is scarce across Pakistan. One comes across the news from almost all major cities and even small towns and villages at times such as Toba Tek Singh, Landi Kotal, Badin, Layyah, Sargodha, Lahore, Sahiwal, Nawabshah, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Kachha area of Johi taluka,

Sialkot, Peshawar, Multan, Gujrat, Cholistan, Bahawalpur, Haripur, Tharparkar, Lower Dir, Mansehra, Gwadar, Mianwali, Bahawalnagar, Narowal, Skardu, Vehari, Rajanpur, etc. where there is either paucity of potable water or water contains high arsenic content leading to water-borne diseases. The relevant authorities need to take immediate action sooner rather than later to the statements circulating such as 'Pakistan is now a severely water-stressed country'.

It was scary to read the following recent statement regarding agro-based Pakistan. Statement reads 'The year 2025 has been marked as the year when Pakistan - if it doesn't mend its ways soon - will turn from a water-stressed country to a water-scarce country. Warnings about water running out have been issued separately by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR).

Per capita surface water availability of 5,260 cubic metres per year in 1951 turned into around 1,000 cubic metres in 2016. This is likely to further drop to about 860 cubic meters by 2025. The PCRWR describe that Pakistan reached the water stress line in 1990 and crossed the water scarcity line in 2005.'

It is a wake-up call which has not woken up anyone, to say the least. The question is what has been done since 1990 in particular.

Some allege the tanker-mafia and others deem water-intensive crops responsible for this ordeal to some extent. One could witness protests in large cities by the denizens of both upscale and downscale localities alike giving the same utterances. It is staggering to know that one could buy potable water at any time in large cities whereas the departments accountable for the provision of water seem to be paying no heed to the acute dearth of potable water across the country.

If the statement regarding tanker-mafia holds true, where is the writ of the government If the conundrum of potable water scarcity is in the wake of water-intensive crops, what is being done to utilize efficient irrigation methods Has anyone at the helm of affairs ever noticed that greywater is being used for toilets or irrigation in many countries to tackle the...

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