Public toilets in Pakistan are filthy.

 

These are the results of a recent study on sanitation facilities in Pakistan, which was conducted by Pakistan's federal ministry for environment in 2005 and revised in March 2006. It found out that only 54 percent of this Pakistan's population has latrine and toilet facilities. Out of this 54 percent, 70 percent live in urban areas while 30 percent are in rural areas.

This child is one of many who end up sick because of the poor quality of water.

 

    In May and June 2006, more than 40 people -- most of them living in major urban areas of Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Deri Gazi Khan, Guiranwala and Sheikhupura – died of dehydration and other complications resulting from gastroenteritis. 

    Worst hit was Faisalabad, the third most populated city in Pakistan located in the north-east of the country, where at least 16 people were killed during a gastroenteritis outbreak in about a week.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Asia Water Wire) – Pakistan has decided to open the purse-strings to build more reservoirs and expand irrigation and drinking water and sanitation as a strategy for development.

   Pakistan’s minister of state for finance Omar Ayub Khan has set aside 435 billion Pakistani rupees (7.5 million U.S. dollars) for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) in the budget for fiscal year 2006-2007 (July to June). Parliament approved the spending plan on June 21.

The controversial Diamer Bhasha dam has mobilised massive street protests.

 

 

   The controversial Diamer Bhasha Dam on the Indus River is to be built in the region where the Hindu Kush and the Himalayan ranges meet and is to store water enough to generate 4,500 megawatt of electricity. 

   Realisation of the general’s plan of building Kalabagh, Akhori, Kuram Tangi and Munda and the Diamer Bhasha dams would mean having a cumulative storage capacity of over 21 million acre feet (MAF) of water. The dams are to collectively cost over 14 billion U.S. dollars.

Efforts are now underway to clean up the Nullah Lai stream, which has become a dumping ground for Rawalpindi.

 

 

   “I know its wrong but I am forced to do it,” he utters hesitantly. “There is no proper place to throw waste and we can not go out of city for the purpose,” he adds. 

Choked uncovered manholes are common in Lahore, and sanitation workers are putting themselves in danger everytime they try to enter and unclog them.

 

 

   Three employees of Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Lahore, were killed in a sewer in the city's Gawalmandi area on May 18. All three did not have basic safety gear when their supervisor asked them to enter the sewer. 

People queue up to get water at the plant, even though the quality of the water cannot be guaranteed.

 

 

   The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has set up 12 filtration plants but the systems are rarely maintained, and are therefore ineffective in terms of pollution control.

   Hand pumps have come as a boon to minority groups – especially to those considered ‘untouchables’ – whose woes were many times greater than the privileged ones.

   Like others, they had to travel long distances but were not allowed to fill their pitchers directly from the source. They had to wait for others to come, fill water and then pour it into their containers.

Thanks to newly installed water pumps, village women now do not have to waste so much time and effort fetching water anymore.

 

 

   "As far as I can remember, I was always fetching water," says Najma Ramzan, a 39-year-old mother of seven of Qadir Bux Chango village in the district of Sanghar in Sindh province, some 250 kilometres from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi.

   Fetching water is considered "a woman’s job" in rural Pakistan and it used to take the roughly 45 women of Najma’s village almost an hour to walk to the source and return home with filled pitchers balanced on their heads.

   This had been Najma’s routine for as long as she can remember – she made as many  as eight trips a day in illness, pregnancy or good health.

   Her life began changing about a year ago when a non-governmental organization helped the villagers install hand-pumps.