Dr Ammad Farukh
IMAGINE living in a world, where one half of the population is striving to reach other planets and have made technological advancements well beyond the human beliefs and imagination. Yet, the second half of the very same world lacks access to the very basic commodities of life, such as the clean drinking water. UNICEF and WHO have highlighted that 1 in 4 people (approximately 2.1 billion people) globally lack access to safely managed drinking water. Out of the billions who face water insecurity, 106 million people are forced to collect and drink water directly from untreated surface sources like rivers, lakes and streams. 3.4 billion people still lack safely managed sanitation, including 354 million who practice open defecation. 1.7 billion people still lack basic hygiene services at home, including 611 million without access to any facilities. Safely managed drinking water coverage rose from 50% to 60% between 2015 and 2024 in the rural areas; yet the circumstances are disastrous. In countries like Chad and the Central African Republic, a staggering 93% of the population lacks access to safely managed drinking water.Such realities indicate that we are living in two different worlds, where the privileged half is not interested in addressing the miseries of the unprivileged people.
Unfortunately, the situation is no different in Pakistan. We have transitioned from a water-stressed country to an absolutely water-scarce nation. Reportedly, PCRWR National Water Quality Monitoring Program has highlighted that nationwide, 80% to 82% of the Pakistanis use unsafe water sources. Regional water testing highlights that water is 100% unsafe in Gilgit Baltistan due to heavy microbial loading from lack of filtration. In Sindh, 85% of the water is unsafe due to severe industrial runoff, open fecal sludge pollution and geogenic arsenic. In Balochistan, 59% of the water is unsafe due to high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and mineral hardness. In Punjab, 51% of the water is unsafe for drinking due to agricultural pesticides and cross-contaminated urban aquifers as the principal culprits.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 43% of the water is unsafe, whereas in Islamabad, 29% of the water is unsafe. In major metros like Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi, municipal sewage lines run parallel to drinking water supply lines. Decades of corrosion have caused the two networks to intermix, delivering fecal coliforms directly to residential taps. Astonishingly, Pakistan, being an agricultural state, losses 61% of the water allocated to the irrigation system due to leaky canals, evaporation and poor distribution management before it ever reaches a consumer or crop. Likewise, unclean water has become a major public health issue as well, since it has become the reason of 80% of all medical diagnoses and accounts for 33% to 40% of all hospital deaths across Pakistan. Diarrheal diseases contractible through contaminated water take the lives of 27000 to 53000 Pakistani children every single year.
The statistics highlight a devastating state of affairs. From global challenges to Pakistan’s vulnerabilities, the data reveals a profound structural collapse rather than a temporary scarcity. Safe drinking water is not a luxury, rather it is the most basic element of human development. When a nation fails to secure it, every other development metric from education and healthcare to economic productivity and gender equality begins to deteriorate. When children spend hours fetching water or are bedridden by waterborne pathogens, classroom attendance drops. Likewise, the financial burden of unclean water acts as a regressive tax on the poorest communities. Globally, billions of hours are lost to water collection. Locally in Pakistan, families must divert substantial portions of their limited income towards buying expensive, unregulated commercial tanker water in cities like Karachi, purchasing firewood or gas to boil contaminated tap water and pay for out-of-pocket medical treatments, private clinical visits and prescription antibiotics to fight preventable gastrointestinal infections. Resolving the crisis does not require a single engineering marvel, instead it requires comprehensive and decentralized solutions.
The structural tragedy of Pakistan’s water crisis lies in a history of misallocated capital. Large-scale infrastructure projects and mega-dams dominate political rhetoric and budgets, yet basic municipal management is starved of resources. Addressing the challenges require separating sewage lines from drinking supplies, repairing leaky distribution networks, implementing community-managed filtration plants and enforcing strict legal penalties on industrial polluters. Policymakers and global institutions have to transition from crisis management to systemic resilience. The future needs to be secured and for that, water security serves as the foundational element.
—The writer is a COO of Bondh-e-Shams, a non-profit organization working for providing clear water using solar-powered technology.
