KARACHI, Jan 31: A study — Report 2003 on the Status of Safe Drinking Water Availability in Sindh — released by the provincial ombudsman’s secretariat on Friday, reveals that 25 to 80 per cent of the water supplied to the major cities of the province is not treated with chlorine and thus cannot be considered safe for drinking.
The report, prepared by Dr Mirza Arshad Ali Beg, says about 75 per cent of the water supplied to Karachi and Hyderabad, about 66 per cent in Sukkur, 60 per cent in Badin, 50 per cent or less in Jacobabad and Nawab Shah and about 20 per cent in Thatta is treated with chlorine, whereas no chlorine is effected in Mirpur Khas, Larkana, Shikarpur, Dadu and Kotri and other towns of the province.
In this way the report adds, 25 to 35 per cent of the water supplied to Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur, 40 to 50 per cent in Badin, Jacobabad, Nawab Shah and 80 per cent in Thatta remains untreated.
Other urban centres of the province, with a population between 25000 to 50,000, are being provided water for drinking with sedimentation tanks only. Moreover, lack of sewage treatment facility and faulty/leaky sewerage lines have contaminated the ground water that pollutes the water in underground tanks. The analysis of ground water from wells, tube wells and hand-pumps shows that they are invariably contaminated with sewage organisms.
The source of drinking water in most of the urban centres in the province is canal water. These systems comprise only a sedimentation pond where the water from irrigation canals is allowed to stand, and the supernatant water then is allowed into a storage tank from where it is pumped to the households.
The report states that the quality of the ground water of the urban centres all over the province is consistently poor, both bacteriologically and chemically. Water from almost 95 per cent of the wells in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and over 90 per cent in their suburbs is contaminated with sewage bacteria besides containing totally dissolved solids beyond permissible limits.
Some toxic materials like inorganic and organic chemicals, dyes, pesticides etc discharged by large scale consumers immediately outside their establishments or working areas often find their way into ground water through seepage and thus contaminate it seriously.
Ground water has been over-exploited in Sindh. The drying of traditional wells in the vegetable and fruit-growing areas in the suburbs of Karachi is a case in point. Permanent damage has been done to the ecosystem of barani or rain-fed areas and of the urban centres in coastal areas.
The study says that people have been forced to get water through tankers, but the quality of such water is not fit for drinking. Those who can afford have resorted to using bottled mineral water which has become a roaring business with no quality control.
The study urges serious efforts to plug the sources of pollution, otherwise the quality of water will degrade further.—PPI
