KARACHI: Landhi epidemic: a second warning for Karachi
By Maheen A. Rashdi
KARACHI: The helpless mother of a two-year-old boy despairingly watches her son loose his grip on life. There is nothing the doctors can do to lessen her grief. As the hospital staff turn their focus on the next emergency, the death of the two-year-old becomes just another number added to the death toll due to the water contamination crisis in Landhi. While it is impossible to gauge the anguish of all those parents who lost their children over the past couple of weeks, succumbing to severe gastroenteritis, it is even more difficult to gauge the remorse – if at all – of those responsible for the contamination which brought in this tragedy.
Though inquiries have been ordered by the government to look into the causes of the gastroenteritis outbreak in Landhi, it is evident that seepage from the sewerage line into the water supply line was its source. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board has so far not accepted any responsibility, clearly stating that the katchi abadi where the contaminated water supply caused 12 deaths (most of whom were children), does not come under its jurisdiction. Further, it is being asserted that the root cause is the illegal connections put up by the residents of the area and the suction pumps installed to draw water with enhanced pressure from the water lines.
But the responsibility cannot be shifted onto the residents as even illegal connections have the ‘unofficial’ sanction of some official, be it a KWSB official or the UC nazim. And secondly, if the designated department responsible for clean water supply in all areas that come under the city government, will not fulfil the water requirement of the residents, what choices are there for the locals except to procure basic necessities, like water, for themselves by any means fair or foul?
The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board had been allocated Rs13 billion under the Tameer-i-Karachi Programme for the development of water and sewerage system in the city out of which a certain amount had been set apart for the katchi abadis as well. But it’s been more than a year since this provision was made and no work has yet been done. There are about 500 localities which are marked as katchi abadis where no ‘outer development’ has been carried out and hence the residents have adopted their own system of water supply and sewerage disposal.
The KWSB has been indifferent towards the needs of the residents in these areas as its jurisdiction and accountability has been disputed since the devolution plan evolved the new system of local governance under the city government. With the administration of the city government not fully covering the functioning of the KWSB, it is not incumbent on its managing director to ‘follow orders’ of the city nazim. The devolution order of the KWSB remained in limbo primarily because of the political conflict in Karachi. Had politics of power not been the prime agenda for the rulers of Karachi, proper action regarding the faulty sewerage system – particularly in Landhi where the tragedy occurred last week — would have been taken three years ago when eight people had died and many taken ill due to the same cause in the same area. It was reported even then that the inhabitants of the area were consuming poisonous water for about four months. Similarly, the KWSB had immediately denied at the time that the disease had spread from contaminated water and due to any fault on its part. When laboratory reports released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) explicitly stated that the deaths were caused by contamination in the water lines, the KWSB authorities insisted that they were not responsible for the casualties as the source of contaminated water was the illegal connections laid by people on their own.
It is pathetic that when immediate overhaul should have been done, only blame shifting took place and hence the tragedy was repeated with a higher magnitude. The katchi abadi residents comprise the lowest strata of society in Karachi and hence their needs have remained lowest on the priority list. If such an event had taken its toll on the residents of a high-income area three years ago, the top heads – especially in the KWSB – would definitely have rolled.
As fellow residents, we are all accomplice in the criminal negligence that resulted in the Landhi tragedy. Water is crucial in the life support system. And when a life supporting potion becomes life threatening, what does a victim do?
In some areas of Lyari, three to four deaths per month are inevitable with cause being severe dysentery due to contaminated water. Residents say that there are times when the water appears black or reddish. The tinge probably depends on the kind of refuse or toxic waste that is mixed in it.
With no proper system available for industrial waste management – also the responsibility of the city government – the contamination in Lyari is mostly because of industrial waste since many industrial set-ups are nearby.
Fears of another outbreak of gastroenteritis are again stirring as reports are circulating of sewerage content detected in drinking water in towns of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Gulistan-i-Jauhar. In the wake of the current tragedy in Landhi and these new fears, immediate measures are required before the situation engulfs the whole city. Foremost is the cleaning of clogged sewerage lines all over the city in tandem with a systematic installation of water and sewerage lines in katchi abadis under strict technical surveillance, particularly near the trunk sewerage lines from where people have illegally installed water lines. Secondly, the devolution of KWSB and subsequently its legal responsibility should be made clear, and all areas that come under the city government – including the katchi abadi zones – should be included in the KWSB jurisdiction.
Unless there is clear cut ownership of issues, we will never see the end of tragedies like the repeated incident of the water-borne epidemic in Landhi.
