No water for Malakand

Imagine a place which has contrasting images of lush green landscapes with rugged mountains as a backdrop. Multiple rivers flow through its land and yet, its people have little or no water to drink. Such are the infrastructural conditions of the visually appealing Malakand district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

The district holds ample importance geographically, as it strategically acts as a gateway to Swat, Dir, Chitral and Bajaur from Peshawar. Keeping its importance in mind, many development projects have been discussed, planned and debated upon for this district but few have seen the light of day.

For the people of Malakand, terrorism has been a major issue in the past, but now, they are also suffering tremendously due to lack of clean water for drinking and domestic use. The surrounding areas of the Malakand bypass include multiple residential colonies where people have to scavenge for every drop of water they can find — either through rivers or under the ground via their rusty hand pumps.

Government officials are usually keen on giving statistical data for everything, showing how much has been spent on each project over the years, at least on paper. Therefore, it came as no surprise when a Public Health Department official shared that a half a million worth of the budget had been allocated to build a pipeline, two transformers and two pure water sewerage plants that were installed by the former provincial government, in collaboration with the department.

However, these projects have not been of much use to the people because the pure water sewage plant required constant and vigilant supervision, for which the government was unable to provide competent staff. A scheme was also introduced asking those individuals who had donated their land for the projects to come and work for the government and supervise the plant. But only few people were interested in this scheme and soon the plant stopped functioning, halting the water supply to the area due to inadequate human resource. The residents voiced their agony because there was no sign of water in the said pipelines, which were embedded two years ago.

“We fill water continuously using the hand pumps but that can be very hectic and straining for us,” said one of the residents. The people hold the former Awami National Party government responsible for their woes. The few pipelines which did exist in the area were either destroyed or stolen and the remaining have become homes to rats. Needless to say, there has been no official inspection from any government employee so far and the people continue to bitterly search for water.

When government officials were approached with this matter, they blatantly accused the public itself of the problem, stating that the public was not interested in taking connections from the water plant, due to which the department stopped the supply. The officials conveniently concluded that if the people really were facing any major issues, the department would have been informed and it would have worked on providing more pipelines for the area.

For now, the people of Malakand have to live with their primitive ways to satisfy even their most primary needs.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2013.

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