Not a drop to drink

The scarcity of clean drinking water remains one of the most unfortunate realities of life in 2015 in Pakistan. If you are reading this article online or in print, you probably take a glass of clean drinking water for granted. You may also unknowingly waste it. All this, while living in a world where according to estimates by WaterAid UK nearly 748 million people still do not have access to safe water, and where one in three people do not have adequate sanitation.

Indeed in many ways clean drinking water and one’s access to it has come to signify the gap between the wealthy and the poor. We live in a country where the very poor are still walking miles with containers – just as the women in their communities have been doing for centuries – to find and carry back water every day, while in other parts of the country, the privileged are using up large quantities of this scarce resource to water sprawling gardens and to wash their cars.

More often than not, what women from those poor communities carry back is dirty and contaminated water that ends up endangering the lives of their families. These deprived souls often contract waterborne diseases and spend valuable time, in which they could have done something productive, in the search for water. Thus, the poor end up exhausting themselves in an effort to merely survive.

According to a report by the Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Punjab has the best rural water supply as only 7 per cent of the rural population depends on a well or a river, canal or stream. In Sindh, the proportion of rural population that depends on these sources of water goes up to 24 per cent, while in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and Balochistan about 46 per cent and 72 per cent respectively of the rural population depend on water from a well or from a river or canal.

The water shortage isn’t just limited to Pakistan’s rural areas. Those who live in major cities are also well aware of water shortages. In Karachi, for instance water pipes reach woefully few areas of the city and the tap water that comes through them is far from clean and drinkable. Not to mention that water from the pipes is often pilfered and sold back to the city’s aggravated citizens. The story of water in Pakistan’s big cities is the same as that of other basic necessities in this country: infrastructure continues to fall short in the face of rapid urbanization, bringing the governments’ failure to provide the most basic of resources starkly into the spotlight.

Indeed, whether it is in rural or urban areas, clean drinking water cannot be taken for granted by almost 50 per cent of Pakistanis who it is estimated lack access to it. Nor can it be taken for granted by the estimated 58 per cent who don’t have access to sanitation facilities.

As stated in a 2011 Supreme Court judgment, the 'right to life' enshrined in Article 9 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973 includes all those aspects of life which go to make a man's life "meaningful, complete and worth living" and specifically states that "right to life implies the right to food, water, decent environment, education, medical care and shelter." A later judgement of the apex court reported in 2014 focuses on the lack of provision of basic amenities to the residents of Balochistan with a special focus on the how a major portion of the population was not getting clean drinking water. One of the reasons for this lack of access, as stated in the aforementioned judgment, was that public money is used in a non-transparent manner and as a result of this corruption there has been no visible development proportionate to the funds had taken place in Balochistan. As a consequence, the enforcement of fundamental rights especially to the basic amenities of life, including access to safe and clean water has been unfortunately compromised.

The impact of this lack of an essential resource on the health, nutrition and education of many Pakistanis is staggering. Health is the obvious one. Because of the lack of clean drinking water, children are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, worm infections, typhoid, and hepatitis A. Some of these diseases can have long term effects on physical, mental and educational development. What is particularly tragic is that according to the Pakistan Council of Research around 200,000 Pakistani children die every year from waterborne diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. Which brings is to a fact that a lot of us ‘know’, but don’t really think about or make the connection: that the lack of clean drinking water kills more people in Pakistan every year than terror attacks. However, unlike the ongoing war with terrorist, the battle for clean drinking water is one which has a relatively simpler and more clear-cut solution. Unlike the other battles that it is engaged in, this is a battle that the government knows how to win, but does very little to do so.

Apart from the impact on health, the scarcity of water is one of the major reasons for the lack of progress in several poor communities which do not receive adequate piped water. If we take the example of an average girl, who is tasked with bringing water for her family, we can only just begin to understand the fundamental way in which water scarcity will impact not just her life, but also that of her community. Girls in such communities spend far too much of their day looking for and collecting water. Not only does this endanger their lives, it also directly affects their enrolment and attendance in schools. In many cases, as expected, their education takes a backseat, thus limiting their chances for social and economic advancement in life. And on the off chance that they do end up in school, not only do a lot of girls drop out as soon as they hit adolescence, due to poor sanitation in schools, but even their siblings suffer due to patchy school attendance, as they get sick so often due to the poor quality of the water that they consume.

The cost to Pakistan of water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases in terms of health and lost earning runs into billions of rupees. Unfortunately these are all costs that can be avoided, fairly easily but little has been done in this regard. Water is indeed the gift of life. Accessing clean and safe drinking water is the first step in getting communities on their feet and helping them thrive. The least the government can do is provide this most basic public health measures to give poor communities dignity and to prevent thousands of Pakistani children from dying, needlessly.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th,  2015.

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