Water shortage: Villagers forced to drink contaminated water

Water supply to Jatathar union council suspended due to non-payment of electricity dues.

PESHAWAR:

Residents of Jatathar union council are being forced to drink polluted water and are prone to fatal diseases, it has been learnt.

For the past two weeks, water supply to Grah Pathar, Akakhel Korona, Habib Korona and Chadhra villages has been cut off due to prolonged outages in Dhabra area, where the union council’s main water tank is located, Jatathar Islahi Committee Chief Hazrat Muhammad told The Express Tribune. He said the tank is the only source of clean water for 12 villages of the union council, adding that without it the villagers have no option but to drink water from the polluted Khawar stream.

Abdur Rehman, an official of Public Health Department Jatathar, said that Dhabra area is facing around 21 hours of loadshedding because the Bhittani tribe, in whose jurisdiction the tank is located, have not paid their electricity dues to the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda). He explained that since the tank’s motors require at least one hour to power up and another 45 minutes to supply water to the nearest village, the prolonged outages have left the remaining villages of the union council without water.



“On one end of the stream, animals consume water from it and people wash clothes in it, and on the other end we fill the same water into canisters to consume,” said Hameedullah, an elder of Chadhra village. Hameedullah is among dozens of villagers who are suffering from diarrhoea after consuming the polluted water. He appealed to the government to resume water supply to his village and save the people from potentially fatal diseases.

Haji Munawar Sadozai, an elder from Waran who recently recovered from a gastro-intestinal infection, claimed that a week back two children in his village died of dysentery after consuming the polluted water. He said the villagers initially bought water at a cost around Rs2,000 per a 2,000 gallon tanker, which lasted for only three days. “Majority of the villagers are poor and they cannot afford to buy water, so they are forced to drink the contaminated water and fall sick,” he added.

Executive District Officer Health Dr Tariq Mehsud confirmed that the villagers are contracting diseases by drink contaminated water from the stream. He added that samples of the stream’s water were found to contain traces of human and animal faeces.



Dr Mehsud said the villagers are at high risk of contracting hepatitis, dysentery and other fatal diseases if they keep consuming water from the stream. “How can you fight a disease if people keep consuming the water that contains lethal germs,” he added. Dr Mehsud advised villagers to thoroughly boil the water before consumption, adding that the administration could also provide them water cleaning pills to purify the water. “But these are temporary measures and what the villagers need is a permanent solution,” he added.

An official of Wapda, requesting anonymity, said the department has been directly not to supply water to the areas defaulting on electricity bills. “But despite our orders, we kept providing electricity to the areas free-of-charge for four hours to ensure that they receive water via the supply line.” The official said the department has contemplated over placing an eight-kilometre-long independent power line to the water tank, “but the option is not feasible for us.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2012.