LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Punjab organiser Chaudhry Sarwar has lamented that 82 per cent Pakistanis do not have clean drinking water and issued a “fact sheet” on Thursday about non-availability of clean drinking water for the masses.

Mr Sarwar said some 1.1 million people, including 250,000 children, die due to unsafe drinking water every year in the country. In Punjab, he said, 30 per cent population was falling prey to hepatitis A and B and other diseases.

He said every third Pakistani was compelled to drink “polluted water” and contracting gastro, typhoid, hepatitis, stomach and throat diseases.

He said there was 75 per cent contaminated potable water in Islamabad and 24 per cent arsenic water in Lahore -- both not safe for drinking.

He said Lahorites were compelled to drink unsafe water due to rusty and oxidised pipelines as well as out-of-order filters and several other reasons.

Instead of the government, he said, non-government organisations and philanthropists were installing filteration plants to provide safe drinking water to the masses. He said the rulers had failed to provide safe drinking water to people.

He said 75 per cent water in Islamabad and 87 per cent in Rawalpindi was not safe for drinking purposes. He said Punjab’s 36 per cent population was compelled to drink harmful water.

He said arsenic was also found in drinking water in Lahore, Multan, Sargodha, Kasur and Bahawalpur, which was taking toll on the poor masses’ lives, while the rulers were showing a complete senselessness.

The fact sheet says 99 per cent water discharged by industries and 92 per cent water being wasted in cities was going into rivers and the ocean. He said the industrial waste and sewage was being disposed of at six or seven points at the Ravi around Lahore.

The PTI leader said the vegetables being supplied to Lahorites were being grown with poisonous water, which was causing harmful effects on the human life.

He said the mixing of heavy metal in drinking water was also affecting children’s physical and mental health. In Lahore, he said, a project of installing 200 filtration plants was launched in 2002, but the incapable rulers had failed to implement this project till now.

He claimed that chlorination of over 300 tubewells out of a total 500 in the provincial capital was not done by Wasa.

“Due to non-chlorinated water, 30-year-old account officer Azhar Abbas of Walton, Lahore, was killed by brain-eating amoeba (Naegleria),” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2015