Water management

Life is not possible without water. However, this basic requirement is scarce and could only be made available to the households at a great cost. In Pakistan, increased population, urbanisation and industrial development have, over the years, placed immense strain on the water resources of the country. The extended drought and the non-availability of additional monsoon water for the reservoirs and irrigation system compounded the problem further. According to a report, per capita availability of water had decreased from 5650cum in 1951 to 1000cum per annum by 2001-02 and water table has been falling at a rate of almost 10 feet every year due to various factors including high industrial and agricultural demands.
The situation has, in the recent past, been particularly precarious in urban centres like Karachi and Hyderabad due to inefficiency and mismanagement at a large scale. The water management in Karachi is so poor that people are often seen agitating on the roads against the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB), attacking its field offices and sometimes resorting to violence to press for the acceptance of their demand to have more water.
Unfortunately, these kinds of protests have not made any difference and the situation continues to deteriorate. It is true that water supply is not in abundance but matters have been made worse by inappropriate leadership in KW&SB, loose and non-professional administration, disorganised and faulty working environment.
Majority of the supervisory and junior working staff are habitual absentees and, in any case, undisciplined. Illegal supply of water to commercial and residential buildings for a given amount of bribe is a routine practice. Priority of self-interest over the interest of the institution in making recoveries from defaulters is causing huge financial loss.
Water is not properly distributed and is often diverted to undesignated areas by illegal means. The most glaring weakness of the KW&SB is its failure to ensure equity in its distribution system in a transparent manner by linking the use of a particular quantity of water to the amount to be charged from the consumer. The use of appropriate water meters to record supply and consumption is not only an international standard practice but would also be in conformity with the practice in all other utility companies in the country.
At present, water bills issued by the KW&SB are based on the use of "assumed" quantity of consumption, depending on the size of the plot, storeys built on it etc without any reference to the actual supply or use of water on the premises. Since water supply in most of the city areas is erratic and the use of water could depend on a number of other factors like the size of households, the water bill issued by the authority has no relevance to the actual consumption.
The public has been demanding the installation of water reading meters at points of bulk supply and at the individual consumer level but such a just demand has not been implemented so far. Also, KW&SB's yearly "water and sewerage bills" are mostly issued late and often not delivered to the concerned addressees. The position of consumers residing in apartments of high-rise buildings is even worse.
The water supply of all the residents is disconnected if a certain percentage of dwellers do not pay the bills. The refusal to supply water to those who have paid the bills is obviously unwarranted, immoral and illegal.
In our view, the KW&SB must pay immediate attention and rationalise its billing system by installing water meters both at the main pipelines and at consumer's level on an urgent basis. If this is done and consumers are charged according to actual use, every household will try to conserve water and the present shortage could largely be overcome. It would also enable the KW&SB to collect bills like KESC and Sui Northern which will improve its financial position tremendously.
There is no doubt that only a financially healthy institution can invest more in projects like laying new pipelines to check leakages, recycling of water, setting up of treatment plants and improve its service standard to the satisfaction of its customers.