ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: Water containing bacteriological contamination to an alarming level is being supplied to 23 major cities of the country, including Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.
This was found during a five-year National Water Quality Monitoring Programme of the government. The project is still on.
The data collected by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) - which is running the project - paints a bleak picture of the quality of drinking water available in the country where 40 per cent of the total number of patients in hospitals are suffering from waterborne diseases.
SINDH: The PCRWR tested water samples of three main cities of Sindh - Hyderabad, Karachi and Sukkur. As much as 87 per cent of the samples collected from various points in Hyderabad were found to be contaminated whereas 75 per cent of those collected in Karachi and Sukkur contained bacteria.
BALOCHISTAN: Ziarat turned out to be the worst-hit area in Balochistan where 100 per cent of the samples collected were found to be contaminated. Eighty per cent of the samples taken from Loralai possessed impurities while its ratio in Khuzdar was 70 per cent and in Quetta 55 per cent.
NWFP: Water quality in Peshawar has worsened from 31 per cent of the samples being found to be contaminated in 2003 to 77 per cent now. As much as 83 per cent of the samples collected in Mardan possessed impurities, 73 per cent in Abbottabad and 60 per cent in Mingora.
ISLAMABAD: Tests have shown that 48 per cent of the samples taken from Islamabad were contaminated. It is a blow to the tall claims of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) regarding supply of clean drinking water to its consumers.
PUNJAB: Sargodha is on top of the list of cities of Punjab possessing contaminated water as 92 per cent of the samples taken from the area contained bacteria. The situation in Bahalwalpur is not satisfactory either: seventy-two per cent of its samples were stricken by bacteriological impurities.
The samples collected from other cities of Punjab contained bacteriological contamination with the following ratio. Fifty per cent in Lahore, 46 per cent in Faisalabad, 64 per cent in Gujranwala, 67 per cent in Gujrat, 40 per cent in Kasur, 56 per cent in Multan, 67 per cent in Rawalpindi, 45 per cent in Sheikhupura and 60 per cent in Sialkot.
Director of the PCRWR, Mohammad Aslam Tahir, told Dawn that unsafe disposal of sewage and untreated disposal of industrial effluent and hospital waste were the main reasons behind the bacteriological contamination in the major cities of the country where millions of people were at risk of contracting diseases like cholera, diarrhoeas, dysentery, etc.
BOTTLED WATER: The PCRWR also analysed water of 18 well-known brands of bottled water and 12 of them turned out to be unfit for consumption. According to sources there were more than 48 brands of bottled water in the market, but the PCRWR could not test all of them due to the fact that some of the products disappeared from the market during when the council was conducting the survey.
