Port of dreams, port of thirst

While the rest of Pakistan’s major cities and most rural areas were inundated by monsoon rains, a group of children stood hand in hand, chanting in unison at Gwadar’s New Tobagh Ward, close to Koh-a-Bun Ward: “Pani do, bijli do, warna kursi chor do.” (Give us water, give us electricity, or vacate the seat.)

As Gwadar and its surrounding villages and towns confront an escalating water crisis, protests and chants of this slogan have become common across the city. Just a day later, another group of women and children from Assa Ward and Lal Baksh Ward blocked the iconic Marine Drive, demanding water. A similar protest was held at Shaheed Lala Hameed Chowk, led byMaulana Hidayatur Rehman.

The port city is often showcased as the linchpin of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, envisioned as a future metropolis akin to Dubai, with wide boulevards, ferries and yachts dotting the Padi Zir (East Bay), and towering cranes silhouetting a rising skyline. Yet beneath this façade unfolds a harsh truth: the children of this city still carry jerry cans in search of water.

With a population of 0.2 million, Gwadar currently needs over 5 million gallons of water daily. However, the municipal pipeline network supplies only a meagre 2 million gallons per day, according to the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department. Assuming that a single person needs 30–50 gallons per day for domestic use, the residential demand remains unmet—excluding industrial, commercial, CPEC-related infrastructure and future growth, which could push demand beyond 10–20 MGD.

“The Ankara Kaur Dam built in 1995 to provide 1.62 MGD has silted up significantly and is completely dead now,” says Javed, journalist and founder of Gwadar-a-Tawar, a local news outlet.
With Ankra Kaur Dam non-functional, the city is now solely reliant on tanker deliveries from the Mirani Dam in the nearby Kech district, costing over Rs 20 million per month—spending often lacking transparency in public audits. The two recently connected Sawar and Shadi Kaur dams are vulnerable to seasonal rainfall, and their long distances cause delays during peak demand and transmission losses.

City dwellers must queue at public standpipes or buy water from private tankers, priced at Rs 3,000–5,000 per 100-gallon load. For low-income families earning less than Rs 20,000 per month, this is impossible.
“On regular days, a tanker costs Rs 21,000–25,000. However, with most dams dried up, the tankers sell water at an increased rate of Rs 30,000,” says Javed. “The official rate, as set by the district administration and deputy commissioner of Gwadar, is Rs 20,000 per tanker, but it is rarely adhered to.”

The government-laid pipeline network is grossly inadequate, with many pipes poorly maintained. Some are clogged; others carry contaminated water. In 2025, the completion of a 158-km pipeline linking Ankara, Sawar and Shadi Kaur dams to four underground reservoirs helped some communities, such as Faqeer Colony and Dhoor, receive water, according to GDA chief engineer Syed Mohammad Baloch. Official data show almost 50 percent of homes in the district receive pipeline water—44 percent through direct connections and 56 percent via stand posts or public tanks—while the rest rely on the tanker mafia, wells and pond water, often unhealthy and contaminated.

Desalination plants and their limits

The much-touted desalination plants have not eased the crisis. The district has three plants which either never worked or were inconsistent at best due to bureaucratic hurdles, corruption and chronic power outages.
“These desalination plants are like museum exhibits,” laments Javed. “They’re there for you to look at, but they won’t fulfil the purpose of supplying water.”

The largest plant, located in Karwat, remains non-functional despite being officially inaugurated at least three times by successive governments. The other two are in Sur Bandar and on Koh-e-Batil. In response to the growing crisis, another seawater desalination plant was inaugurated in 2023 with Chinese funding under CPEC. This new plant was aimed to produce 1.2 million gallons per day—only a small fraction of the city’s estimated demand of 16–22 MGD.
For many people living in and around Gwadar, water is not just a problem — it defines daily life. Girls drop out of school to stand at community stand posts or fetch water kilometres away each day. Diseases like diarrhoea and cholera have risen, while dehydration, back pain and depression are common among women owing to the constant stress of water shortage.

The economic impact of water scarcity also affects Gwadar’s fishermen. Fishing—the sole income for coastal towns—requires water for ice-making, preserving catches and washing nets,” says Javed. “They end up spending more on buying water than they earn from selling fish. “What they earn from catching fish in one trip is spent on purchasing water and fuel.” 

Thirst in the hinterlands

In the vast coastal belt of Balochistan, just behind the shimmering billboards and free-trade zones of Gwadar city, far-flung villages like Jiwani, Pasni, Kulanch, Sur Bandar, Ormara and Pishukaan are parched. Unlike the port city, these villages seldom make headlines, yet the shortage of water has steadily worsened.
“We don’t have any water to drink, let alone for bathing,” Dur Muhammad laments as he scoops brackish water from a shallow well he must re-dig daily. “We come here on motorcycles or donkeys, even on foot. All we ask for is water, but nothing changes and no one listens.”

Dur Muhammad, 30, lives in Dasht Kurmi, a village in Suntsar, Tehsil Jiwani, just four kilometres before the BP-250 checkpoint—commonly known as the Gabd Rimdan-250 border. This village lies between two major ports—roughly 120 km east of Iran’s Chabahar port and 70 km west of Gwadar—yet its people live in a world apart.

With a population of around 400 and no road access (requiring boat commute due to poor infrastructure), Dasht Kurmi is divided into four settlements: Faqeer Muhammad Bazaar, Hammal Bazaar, Kalar Bazaar and Kahuda Sadiq Bazaar. In these dusty settlements, water is scarce.

“The acutest water shortage in the Gwadar district is in Jiwani Tehsil,” he adds. “Locals here have turned to natural ways of water conservation.”

When it rains, which is rare, villagers dig trench-shaped earthen ponds to collect water and prevent runoff. These makeshift catchments temporarily become lifelines for several weeks. They also dig small wells known as khaneegs to collect water three metres beneath the cracked soil—a technique passed down for generations in areas where government pipelines, including those under CPEC, rarely reach or function.

For the people of Jiwani, water once came via pipelines from the now-dead Ankra Kaur Dam, but they are now at the mercy of the tanker mafia.

Protests in Jiwani have been marked by deadly violence since their inception. On 21 February 1987, three people—including a child named Yasmeen—were reportedly killed when security forces opened fire on demonstrators rallying for water. Despite an allocation of Rs 937 million in 2021 for dams and pipelines, little progress is visible in Jiwani as of 2025.

According to provincial government estimates, Gwadar city and its adjoining town of Jiwani, with nearly 200,000 people as of 2012, needed 3.5 million gallons of water daily, but normal daily delivery was only 2 million gallons—leaving a shortfall of 1.5 million gallons per day.

“The people living near Pasni spend more time looking for water than fishing,” says Waqar Ghafoor, a resident of Reek-a-Pusht, Pasni. “Every morning, locals take their containers and wait by the roadside under the sun for hours, hoping a private tanker may pass. The water is often brackish and sometimes there are no tankers at all. What kind of life is this? We’re just surviving.”

Pasni, a fishing town of 100,000 residents, is supplied by the Shadi Kaur Dam, built in 2004, which also supplies nearby Ormara. By now, the dam has silted and is damaged, providing only limited water. In 2011, when Pasni’s population was 50,000, its daily requirement stood at 1.5 million gallons, while actual supply was less than 1 million—barely meeting six percent of total needs.

“We receive water from the Shadi Kaur Dam via pipelines poured into big tanks in the city, from where a network of pipes distributes water to homes,” explains Waqar. “Though my area receives some water, people living deeper in the city face dire shortages. The pipelines are broken or stolen, and pumping stations shut down for days due to lack of fuel or administrative issues.”

Following the collapse of Shadi Kaur Dam in 2005, which killed 70 people and devastated homes and agricultural land, the dam was rebuilt in 2010 under the Federal Public Sector Development Programme. Built at a cost of Rs 7.9 billion with a storage capacity of 37,000 acre-feet (45.6 million cubic metres), it was expected to supply 70 cusecs (cubic feet per second). Now it supplies just 12 cusecs to Pasni and Ormara—8 cusecs for agriculture and 4 for tanker trucks. With almost no rain, storage capacity has dropped below 30 percent, officials say.

Kulanch, another town a few kilometres from Gwadar port, also depends on Sawar Dam. “Some villages of Kulanch are connected to the pipeline network while others aren’t,” says Ishaque Ibrahim of Beelaar, Kulanch, whose family relocated to Kech due to water shortage.

Ishaque says that although Sawar Dam technically serves the area, distribution is unequal. “You can get water only if you have recommendations. The affluent and the well-connected get supply while the poor are left to the private tanker mafia, which charges Rs 21,000–25,000—an amount few can afford.”

Dams and desalination 

The water crisis in the district is both man-made and natural. The hot, dry terrain and thin freshwater lens of the Makran Coast mean freshwater is limited and at risk of seawater intrusion. Rising sea levels keep destroying homes in Pishukan and Ganz, where saltwater intrusion has rendered many wells useless. For many villages, hand pumps churn out saline water that damages the skin.

Desalination efforts go back to 2008. Four plants were proposed in 2017—one for Gwadar city (Rs 1 billion) and three for Jiwani, Pasni and Singhar (Rs 20 million each). By 2017, only the Gwadar plant was functional; the others stalled due to bureaucratic delays and lack of staff. The Gwadar Seawater Desalination Plant opened in 2023 supplies the city only, leaving peripheral areas out.

In April 2023, two Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants were inaugurated for Sur Bandar and Chabarkani — hometown of MPA Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman — but they still do not serve remote towns such as Pasni, Pishukaan, Ormara or Jiwani.

Fixing the flow

The solution to the water crisis is neither prohibitively expensive nor complex. Abdullah Rahim, who runs the Facebook page Makran Weather Forecast, says that building small and medium-sized dams around the district to trap seasonal rains could drastically reduce dependency on faraway sources like Mirani Dam. Reviving and de-silting Ankra Kaur and Shadi Kaur dams could return millions of gallons to circulation.

“Local hydrologists believe building small dams on the hilly catchments of Nigwar and Kulanch can help reduce dependency,” says Abdullah. He recalls February 2024, when an unseasonal shower dropped 183 millimetres of rain in 30 hours—more than Gwadar’s normal annual rainfall. “All the streets were under water and people were stranded. When the rain receded, there wasn’t a single reservoir or water body to show for it,” he says. “There were no check dams, no retention ponds. This precious rainwater simply ran into the Arabian Sea.” Officials estimate that storing just 30 percent of that water could have met Gwadar’s water demand for months.

Javed MB, however, notes that the Makran division lies outside Pakistan’s traditional monsoon belt. “Though dams help when it rains, what about the years when it doesn’t?” Pakistan’s Meteorological Department has also warned that the Makran Coast is becoming drier and hotter, with longer dry spells and shorter monsoons.

“We need to operationalise existing desalination plants in Gwadar and nearby towns. Solar-powered small filtration units could serve off-grid villages,” says Javed.

Water in Gwadar is a commodity of inclusion or exclusion, a test of loyalty to the land or a spur to departure—provoking the question: Is Gwadar being built for its current poor residents, or for an envisioned future of investors and gated economic zones?

And yet, every evening, as the cranes of the port continue their slow rotation and ships are unloaded with horns echoing at dusk, somewhere in the hills a girl returns home with a jerry can, half full. Her back aches; the water tastes metallic. But she and others have no choice. For the world, Gwadar may be a port of luxury and opportunity; for the locals, it is a port of thirst.
    
Zeeshan Nasir is a Turbat-based writer. He posts on X at @zeeshannasir972
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author