Staying afloat

Water is one of those crises that never go away. There is either too much of it — flood; or too little — drought, but in both instances there is a constant and that is the generally poor management of water resources nationally. The Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) has painted a picture which is bleak but not without hope. It reveals a lack of coordination between the provinces stretching back decades leading to about 90-95 per cent of water going to waste and draining to the sea. The global average is about 70 per cent. Nationally there is a 30- day ‘stock’ of water which is the lowest in the world.

It is not that water projects have been starved of money, far from it. There are 81 ongoing projects included in the development budget of Rs36 billion and there are 51 projects described as ‘ongoing’. Unfortunately at the current rate of work they are going to take 30 years to complete by which time the population will have long depleted as they die of dehydration. The MWR lamented the failure of provinces to work together effectively, as well as a lacklustre and lethargic response at a federal level going back over several governments.

Given the existential importance of water as a national resource it is difficult to comprehend the myopic incompetence that has led to this parlous state of affairs. The new government now has yet another toxic legacy item to deal with and as with all the other cankerous items peppering the ‘to-do’ list there is no quick fix and no single solution. Persuading fractious provinces to come together on a single issue, especially one as complex as water, is going to take longer than a few weeks or months. It is all very well for agencies such as the MWR to present difficult realities, but unless there is a government that has the competencies and capacity to action those reports then they are for nought. We await developments. Soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2018.

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