Azhar Ali
WITH a blink of wind or a thunder of the cloud, the first thing people in Pakistan suffer is outage of grid leaving most of them out of electricity. Similarly, in winter the pressure in gas pipe lines reduces to a level leaving you no source to cook or keep warm. Tap water in most of the cities is already not drinkable while traffic signals are frequently out of order. Imagine a thunderstorm in cold winter eve and then it is you and your creator only, no support from utilities will be available to you.
Strangely in freezing countries of Europe including Turkey one neither has grid outrage nor reduced gas pressure in extreme winters. Similarly, in hottest climates of Middle Eastern developed countries you have 24-hour presence of utilities services. What could be the reason behind the apathy faced by citizens of Pakistan. There are three major reasons one may look for. First of all, we are in a very much hurry to implement a certain project, be it provision of electricity, gas, drinking water, treatment of water or waste water and provision of other civic services. In the developed world data collection and appropriate design phase may take up to two years while we wish to have it done in 4-6 months. We Google the web, consult text books (written for other countries) and shake older studies and come up with half-cooked designs. In our urge of urgency, we implement half-cooked solutions leading to failures and huge maintenance costs (which we rarely account for) resulting in misery of beneficiaries and wastage of resources.
Let us hope that by a miracle or due to international loaner’s presence we somehow managed to get the design right. In this case alas we go for rationalizing the costs. This decision is mostly political or managerial easing the technical requirements and rationalizing in almost all cases would mean reducing the cost. This results in lower quality work of a project again leading to failure once in service. Thirdly, even if the design is appropriate and finances available are enough, we lack proper monitoring along with wide spread corruption to under-estimate the quality of work. Society is full of examples in which public buildings were completed later than the completion of personal houses of people involved. Another problem is ignoring the importance of standards set in design. Be it proper ditching of pipes, connections, insulation of pipes and wires, all these issues are given least importance. Major reason is our aptitude as a society to seek temporary solutions ie jugaar rather than spending time, resource and applying the right design while doing a certain work.
How can we overcome the failure of projects and our utilities sector? The strategy required needs time and resources. First of all, we need to equip our design teams in all sectors with latest appropriate practical knowledge. Turkey and China seem to be great options for our technical experts to actually work on systems for at least one year to understand them better. Many Turkish municipalities have developed ‘municipal services academies’ where theoretical and practical trainings range from weeks to years and are open to all who are interested. The ‘union of municipalities’’ of Turkey is about to finalize its design of ‘Municipal Academy’ with an investment of USD 1 Billion where practical trainings would be provided for all municipal services. We need to get people trained from such places and also develop our very own such centres. Our experts may enhance their knowledge practically by developing small to medium-scale facilities inside the country.
We all admire the beauty of clean water streams flowing through European cities but back at home we have floating solid waste dumps on the surface of the streams carrying waste water. Prioritization must be done logically, while we are to build waste water treatment plants for cities, they are bound to fail if we don’t have secure and reliable waste water collection system. Open channels imply flow can change and also nature of waste water may change at the point of discharge. In the very same way, our electric and phone lines are hanging from pole to pole and a long wooden ladder can be seen following two persons on a bike in the streets to keep the system operational. This is the state of affairs on the ground and we seek state-of-art which in this case seems to be moving wooden ladder! Every treatment plant and similarly a project related to utility service is unique and needs local investigation and measures. This may increase any chance of success. Concerning the finances involved, all projects need to have a full cost recovery mechanism and full cost implies investment cost as well as operation and maintenance expenses. In this regard life cycle costing tool should be made mandatory before evaluation of any project. Similarly, unit-cost comparison and assessment should be done before final approval.
Lastly, we should not forget that giving half dose of a medicine to hundred patients is less promising than giving the required full dose to even thirty. We should quit habit of having dozens of not well planned, half-cooked and inefficient projects in favour of a smaller number of well prepared and efficient projects. This would need capacity building of all stakeholders including decision-makers, implementers and beneficiaries. Beneficiaries inclusion right from the perception of a project idea is quite crucial. People who are going to use a certain utility or service should have a say and choice of prioritization. Public awareness and sense of ownership is also crucial if we seek to have reliable and useful projects and utility services.
—The writer is a senior specialist at the Urban Unit Lahore and has worked in fields of Engineering, Public Health, Ecology, Disaster Management, Change Management and Energy Management.
