It is a well-known fact that drinking water in Pakistan, in general, is not suitable for human consumption, rather it is injurious to the health. The situation has worsened in recent years for the 55 million urban population that practically has no access to safe potable water.
According to a recent report conducted by Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, as many as 311 water samples, out of 345 samples taken from different water sources nationwide, were not complying with the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.
Shockingly, none of the samples collected from Karachi and Lahore was of clean safe water, as either it was turbid or polluted, with bacteria or contaminated, or a combination, exceeding the permissible limits and regulatory standards.
The situation in small towns and rural areas of Sindh and Punjab is even more critical, as demonstrated recently in a number of deaths in both the provinces caused due to the use of contaminated water supply.
Disposable of untreated industrial waste into rivers, canals and drains has deteriorated groundwater quality.
Another series of tests on 280 samples of water collected from industrial cities of Punjab revealed that 239 samples, out of 280, had high concentration of toxic elements like arsenic, fluoride, lead, cadmium, chromium, iron, and other industrial effluents in the water. Recently the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) conducted analysis of samples of tube-well water from Sheikhupura.
According to the result, water is of bacteriological quality and contains nickel, cadmium and iron in quantity limits higher than allowable values to larger extent.
As an illustration, it contained 0.25 milligram per liter (mg/l) nickel (allowable 0.02), 0.78 mg/l iron (allowable 0.3) and 0.02 mg/l cadmium (allowable 0.01).
Sadly, there exist no mentionable facilities in the country for treating dissolved metals and other solids in water, other than just filtration and that too only in the major cities.
Thus the majority of population has no option but to consume polluted water, which exposes them to waterborne diseases and resultantly severe health problems.
It has been estimated that almost seventy-percent diseases, such as hepatitis, typhoid, cholera and diarrhea are caused due to poor quality of drinking water, and some 250,000 children die every year on that account.
In May last year, President Musharraf had promised to provide the basic facility of safe drinking water to its entire population in both urban and rural areas by the year 2007. Unfortunately, the government has done nothing concrete as yet to implement the plans, if at all there were any.
In the wake of stark realities about the availability and quality of water, or lack of it, such statements appear to be nothing more than rhetoric.