Talking toilets

Taken as a whole, Pakistan has poor sanitation. It is a water-poor country with a rapidly expanding urban population that grows far in advance of its sanitation needs. Rural sanitation is in large part completely absent. Sindh is, at least, cognisant of the problem and the Directorate of Urban Policy and Strategic Planning is busy formulating a sanitation policy. In a welcome move in terms of public consultation, the draft policy was presented to a group of experts in the field to gauge their feedback. It is said that if a dollar is spent on clean water and sewerage facilities in a developing country, as much as $8 can be saved in healthcare costs as fewer people become ill. On paper, at least, that looks like a good yield on investment, but thus far the emphasis appears to be on policy rather than something concrete and Sindh has only allocated Rs1.2 billion in the coming fiscal year to fund 170 new and ongoing projects. The US government is making a substantial input, donating $66m for municipal water and sanitation infrastructure across the province.

The task ahead is Herculean. For the major urban conurbations/cities like Karachi and Hyderabad, the situation, whilst far from ideal, is not as catastrophic as in the rural hinterland where about three-quarters of the provinces’ rural population is either not provided for at all in terms of sanitation, or are inadequately so. Even where projects have been completed many have quickly fallen into disrepair or disuse, as evidenced by the fact that 876 schemes had been completed by the end of 2013 but 420 of them are non-functional today. The goals are grand — to provide complete sanitation services for all by 2025. Sindh is disaster-prone, and it is going to be important to design and build projects that are disaster resistant, particularly to flooding. Industrial waste management is increasingly an issue as is the management complexity in terms of inter-agency coordination, with there being a generally poor track record of departments and agencies working in consort. Difficulties aside, we welcome this initiative, a tough but laudable goal.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2014.

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