Access to potable water in Sindh
Sukkur residents do not have access to a smooth supply of clean drinking water
Naveed Iftikhar is a public policy adviser and research fellow having interest in public-sector governance, cities and entrepreneurship. He tweets @navift.
The village Sodo Sarwari is situated a few miles from Sukkur. The village gets surface water from the nearby canal and then rudimentarily processes it for drinking. The canal becomes dry for a couple of months each year and the residents would be left to face colossal trouble in accessing water. Confronted with this challenge, the residents approached the relevant provincial department to bore through the rock at the canal bank to extract water during dry months, but the department could not approve finances for it.
The residents collected Rs250,000 in 2015 from the villagers for the boring of a tube well. The cost to bore a hole in the ground was borne by the local community and pumps were provided by the government department. One comes across many initiatives of the like in Sindh province, where through collective action, citizens meet their own needs when faced with poor governance. However, the overall environment in the province is still not conducive to encourage partnerships and self-governance.
Sukkur is surrounded by water from three sides, yet the majority of residents do not have access to a smooth supply of clean drinking water. A local government official in Sukkur recited a verse of Shah Latif Bhittai which can be interpreted as: A fool may die of thirst even if he is by the river bank. We observed almost the same situation in Sukkur and later in Hyderabad; citizens are suffering due to lack of access to clean drinking water despite being situated at the bank of the River Indus. We were informed about diseases and childhood stunting that citizens were suffering due to lack of access to clean drinking water. We consider that poor governance of the water sector is mainly responsible for suboptimal outcomes instead of lack of public investment. Almost all of the water schemes in the province are not completed on time and many of them would become dysfunctional soon due to misuse of operations and maintenance expenditures.
On the other hand, the schemes and initiatives where communities were closely involved and contributing were performing much better. The village of Tando Soomro, situated near Hyderabad, is the perfect example of how the members of a community can join hands and beautifully execute for themselves the role that local governments fail to play. Through collective action, residents of the village have been raising approximately Rs10 million every year from local, voluntary contributions for investing in water and sanitation, education, security and other such services. The key behind the success of this model village is simple: accountability. Budget allocations and expenditures are revealed on a public forum; decisions are taken collectively and a bottom-up approach is adopted; each household’s contribution is defined according to the income of its members and those who fail to contribute are publicly pointed out. We think such actions need to be investigated in-depth by researchers so that other villages and towns may learn how to undertake collective action.
While public-private partnerships (PPPs) have emerged in many sectors across Sindh, the departments involved in the drinking water sector have been rather lethargic in this regard. However, an example of how PPPs can be successful is a recent initiative by The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Hyderabad to outsource bill distribution/recovery to a private company. The agency has been able to almost double its bill recovery. In the absence of accountability and monitoring systems, WASA officials were not even able to keep track of whether employed bill distributors were doing their job. By involving a third party and offering a mutually beneficial income-sharing model, WASA, Hyderabad has improved outcomes. There is a need to promote public-private partnerships to generate investment and managerial efficiency of pumping stations, filtration plants, and operations and maintenance of distribution networks. Nonetheless, the extremely low pricing of drinking water is indeed one of the biggest obstacles in the way of sustainability of water schemes and improving water conservation. In Hyderabad, the charges for piped water supply are Rs170 a month, while the municipal department in Sukkur charges a meagre Rs360 a year, and even these amounts go unpaid.
During our visit to Sindh last week for our research on the drinking water sector in Sindh, we had meetings with the Chambers of Commerce and Industries of Hyderabad and Sukkur. They showed keen interest in developing partnerships with local water authorities to improve the situation of drinking water in Sindh. However, they shared that the water authorities do not disclose their plans and investments publicly and this absence of transparency leads to corruption and mismanagement.
One of the senior officials in the Sindh government said that concepts like participation, partnerships and collective action are imported from the West and cannot prevail in a country like Pakistan. He appeared ignorant of how rural (and in a few cases, urban) communities within Sindh have collectively learned to meet their own needs. This antagonistic attitude reflects the concerns of citizens regarding participation in the water sector; there is willingness from local communities to engage in improving service delivery, but there is a lack of interest from the public sector, be it provincial or local. Institutions like the National School of Public Policy and other civil services training institutions should further deepen the spirit of inclusive governance among the participants of their courses.
During our visit, we were informed of the contribution of the Supreme Court Commission on Water led by Honourable Justice Retired Amir Hani Muslim. The commission has streamlined many projects and schemes. However, these may prove to be adhoc arrangements in the long run as institutional architecture in the water sector has not been paid much attention. Some of these issues relate to transparency, accountability, partnerships, water pricing, monitoring, capacity of water authorities and independent impact evaluations.
The PPP government under the leadership of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari faces tremendous public pressure for lack of access to clean drinking water in Sindh. It is time that they came out of traditional and bureaucratic approaches for service delivery. They need to promote partnerships, engagement with startups and youth, and improve transparency and accountability. The National Water Policy 2018 provides an excellent framework for achieving such objectives. But there is a need to carry out institutional, administrative and legal changes in the provincial governance system to implement the water policy.
During our interactions with community organisations, citizens and other stakeholders in Sindh, we shared the model of Changa Pani, (Clean Water) developed by a social entrepreneur and activis Nazir Ahmad Wattoo. After some localities in Faisalabad and Lahore, the model is now being implemented in Bhalwal and many other cities in Punjab have also been showing keen interest in this community-government partnership model for providing access to clean drinking water.
We hope that more voices for transparency and citizen engagement will yield optimal outcomes in the drinking water sector in Sindh.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 7th, 2018.
The residents collected Rs250,000 in 2015 from the villagers for the boring of a tube well. The cost to bore a hole in the ground was borne by the local community and pumps were provided by the government department. One comes across many initiatives of the like in Sindh province, where through collective action, citizens meet their own needs when faced with poor governance. However, the overall environment in the province is still not conducive to encourage partnerships and self-governance.
Sukkur is surrounded by water from three sides, yet the majority of residents do not have access to a smooth supply of clean drinking water. A local government official in Sukkur recited a verse of Shah Latif Bhittai which can be interpreted as: A fool may die of thirst even if he is by the river bank. We observed almost the same situation in Sukkur and later in Hyderabad; citizens are suffering due to lack of access to clean drinking water despite being situated at the bank of the River Indus. We were informed about diseases and childhood stunting that citizens were suffering due to lack of access to clean drinking water. We consider that poor governance of the water sector is mainly responsible for suboptimal outcomes instead of lack of public investment. Almost all of the water schemes in the province are not completed on time and many of them would become dysfunctional soon due to misuse of operations and maintenance expenditures.
On the other hand, the schemes and initiatives where communities were closely involved and contributing were performing much better. The village of Tando Soomro, situated near Hyderabad, is the perfect example of how the members of a community can join hands and beautifully execute for themselves the role that local governments fail to play. Through collective action, residents of the village have been raising approximately Rs10 million every year from local, voluntary contributions for investing in water and sanitation, education, security and other such services. The key behind the success of this model village is simple: accountability. Budget allocations and expenditures are revealed on a public forum; decisions are taken collectively and a bottom-up approach is adopted; each household’s contribution is defined according to the income of its members and those who fail to contribute are publicly pointed out. We think such actions need to be investigated in-depth by researchers so that other villages and towns may learn how to undertake collective action.
While public-private partnerships (PPPs) have emerged in many sectors across Sindh, the departments involved in the drinking water sector have been rather lethargic in this regard. However, an example of how PPPs can be successful is a recent initiative by The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Hyderabad to outsource bill distribution/recovery to a private company. The agency has been able to almost double its bill recovery. In the absence of accountability and monitoring systems, WASA officials were not even able to keep track of whether employed bill distributors were doing their job. By involving a third party and offering a mutually beneficial income-sharing model, WASA, Hyderabad has improved outcomes. There is a need to promote public-private partnerships to generate investment and managerial efficiency of pumping stations, filtration plants, and operations and maintenance of distribution networks. Nonetheless, the extremely low pricing of drinking water is indeed one of the biggest obstacles in the way of sustainability of water schemes and improving water conservation. In Hyderabad, the charges for piped water supply are Rs170 a month, while the municipal department in Sukkur charges a meagre Rs360 a year, and even these amounts go unpaid.
During our visit to Sindh last week for our research on the drinking water sector in Sindh, we had meetings with the Chambers of Commerce and Industries of Hyderabad and Sukkur. They showed keen interest in developing partnerships with local water authorities to improve the situation of drinking water in Sindh. However, they shared that the water authorities do not disclose their plans and investments publicly and this absence of transparency leads to corruption and mismanagement.
One of the senior officials in the Sindh government said that concepts like participation, partnerships and collective action are imported from the West and cannot prevail in a country like Pakistan. He appeared ignorant of how rural (and in a few cases, urban) communities within Sindh have collectively learned to meet their own needs. This antagonistic attitude reflects the concerns of citizens regarding participation in the water sector; there is willingness from local communities to engage in improving service delivery, but there is a lack of interest from the public sector, be it provincial or local. Institutions like the National School of Public Policy and other civil services training institutions should further deepen the spirit of inclusive governance among the participants of their courses.
During our visit, we were informed of the contribution of the Supreme Court Commission on Water led by Honourable Justice Retired Amir Hani Muslim. The commission has streamlined many projects and schemes. However, these may prove to be adhoc arrangements in the long run as institutional architecture in the water sector has not been paid much attention. Some of these issues relate to transparency, accountability, partnerships, water pricing, monitoring, capacity of water authorities and independent impact evaluations.
The PPP government under the leadership of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari faces tremendous public pressure for lack of access to clean drinking water in Sindh. It is time that they came out of traditional and bureaucratic approaches for service delivery. They need to promote partnerships, engagement with startups and youth, and improve transparency and accountability. The National Water Policy 2018 provides an excellent framework for achieving such objectives. But there is a need to carry out institutional, administrative and legal changes in the provincial governance system to implement the water policy.
During our interactions with community organisations, citizens and other stakeholders in Sindh, we shared the model of Changa Pani, (Clean Water) developed by a social entrepreneur and activis Nazir Ahmad Wattoo. After some localities in Faisalabad and Lahore, the model is now being implemented in Bhalwal and many other cities in Punjab have also been showing keen interest in this community-government partnership model for providing access to clean drinking water.
We hope that more voices for transparency and citizen engagement will yield optimal outcomes in the drinking water sector in Sindh.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 7th, 2018.