May 28, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25,1424

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PESHAWAR, May 27: Water shortage can hit the people of drought-affected semi-arid Karak district with the advent of summer.

Women and children have to fetch water from long distances in the town situated 133km south of Peshawar.

All the previous governments have failed to effectively tackle this growing crisis. The issue has become so intense that women and children have to visit the distantly located community water tanks several times a day to bring water for their families.

Fatima, a student of class six of the Government High School Chukara, Karak district, has to visit the community water tank six times a day — once before going to school and five times in the evening.

Same is the case with Maryam, a student of class eight and Vikas, who is in 5th class.

All of them complained that they could not concentrate on their studies owing to the harsh task of fetching water from long distance.

Ghulam Mujtaba, deputy district officer, water supply and sanitation department, when contacted, claimed that 84 per cent of the over 460,000 total population of the district  was getting drinking water through the  district government’s distribution network. He claims that the scarcity has been also caused by unauthorized and illegally water connections. However, his claim was rejected by the people and representatives of various community development organizations.

Except for few pockets where underground water resources are available in limited quantities, vast area of the semi-arid Karak district lacks sweet water deposits mainly due to its climate and geographical location.

Mohammed Usman, a villager, said that despite the fact the area lacked drinking water resources none of the successive governments paid required attention to resolve people’s pressing problem.

The water storage and supply scheme completed at Zaibi near Karak town with a total cost of Rs 62 million in 1997, has yet to benefit people of the area.

Despite the fact that the water reservoir was filled to capacity for a long time, it had not become functional mainly due to indifferent attitude of the provincial authorities concerned.

The misery is supplemented due to prolonged drought which has affected the entire district. Agriculture is another area which is depends on rainfall.

At present only four tube wells are functioning out of 19 installed to meet 68,000 gallons a day requirement of a population of 34,000 of the town. The remaining have dried up or got saline due to extensive pumping of water.

The water supply and sanitation department claims that half of the population of Karak town still gets drinking water from its water supply network, a claim rejected by the local population.

Official sources said that in majority of the cases, tube wells installed in several areas had recorded sharp decline in their capacity to pump out water which, in several instances, had gone down from 5,000 gallons per hour to 800 gallons per hour.

The situation is attributed to drought.

Drash Khel, Waziran, Bahadar Khel, Ahmadi Banda, B. D. Shah, Terri, Gurgoori, Aman Kot and several other areas in all the three tehsils of district Karak are among those parts where tube wells capacity have recorded decline during the last two years.

The public health engineering department of the province have developed over 200 water supply schemes in different parts of the district with an investment of over Rs 400 million, but before these schemes are completed a lot has to be done to meet people’s needs.