Unsafe water jeopardises health of rural populace

WASA continues to prioritise urban areas, leading to suburban locals relying on consuming contaminated groundwater

LAHORE:

Where the proliferation of filtration facilities would have many city dwellers consider clean water a run-of-the-mill commodity, the dire shortage of filter plants in rural areas implies that for the suburban locals, safe water is nothing but an exclusive luxury.

Despite the fact that the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) provides clean drinking water, through filtration plant setups to citizens across different cities of Punjab including Lahore, millions of people living on the outskirts of the provincial capital still utilise hand pumps for extracting groundwater, which is contaminated not only by sand and silt but also by multiple artificial toxins.

Tariq Mehmood, a resident of Jalomore, located on the outskirts of Lahore, revealed that the locals in his area use groundwater extracted from an injector pump for drinking and cooking purposes.

“A water filtration plant was set up in our village a few years ago but it has worn out with time and is no longer functional. While some people can access selected, privately installed water filters, most have no option but to boil groundwater for consumption,” resented Mehmood.

According to a report by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), scientific standard tests carried out on water samples from 29 major cities including Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Faisalabad, and Lahore, and surrounding 85 villages, indicated that 51 per cent of drinking water sources were unfit for consumption as they were crammed with colonies of bacteria alongside containing unsafe amounts of chemical compounds like arsenic, fluoride, total dissolved solids (TDS) and nitrates.

“Consuming and using contaminated water can easily trigger gastrointestinal diseases and skin conditions among groups with weak immunity, like children” said Dr Khalid Pervez, a medical practitioner, who further revealed that water borne illnesses like diarrhoea, were a popular health concern among rural populations due to the unavailability of filtered water.

In its defence, WASA maintains that its scope for providing filtration facilities is limited to the urban population only, with 594 tube wells installed for water supply in Lahore. “During the past couple of years, it was proposed that WASA be given the responsibility of managing water filtration in the suburbs of Lahore as well, but the plans could not reach fruition,” commented a spokesperson from WASA.

Speaking to The Express Tribune on the matter, an official from PCRWR said, “During the last two decades, the percentage of water pollution has come down from 82 per cent to 61 per cent across the country. Water scarcity, however, has exacerbated the contamination of water since dry water supply lines are breeding grounds for bacterial growth,” asserted the official.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12^th, 2023..