UNLIKE the barren, broken tracks one often traverses while going to the interior parts of Sindh, the road leading to Tando Allahyar from Hyderabad is scenic and offers comfortable driving. Trees with thick canopies line a large part of the highway, which also provides a glimpse into the vast tracts of land under cultivation here. All told, the scene is one of peaceful prosperity.

That impression evaporates the instant one walks into the villages in the area. Here, it is obvious that the communities are struggling badly. A case in point is the village of Allah Bux Arbab located some distance from the city of Tando Allahyar. What this poverty-stricken village and a city like Karachi have in common is the fact that many of their inhabitants purchase their drinking water. Yet, despite paying for water that they believed is clean, the villagers continue to suffer from numerous health problems.

Ghulam Rasool Majidano, a schoolteacher, explains that the underground water of the village was declared harmful by an expert team a long time ago.

“Many people took this information seriously, seeing harmful water as the cause of their numerous health problems, particularly skin ailments, and gradually stopped drinking bore water. I think it was a positive step but this village’s major issue is health,” he says, pointing towards the patchy, flaky skin on his forehead that persists although he has been treated for a long time.

Skin ailments, such as extreme itchiness and roughness of the skin on the hands and feet, seem to have affected women and children more in the village, which has also been seriously hit by hepatitis in recent years. While the villagers don’t know exactly what has rendered the underground water unsafe, what’s obvious is that this settlement, with its population of over 3,000, does not have a public water supply scheme, a sewerage system, or a health facility.

The village seems to be drowning under the weight of its own sewage that collects in pools after being discharged from houses. The spill flows into the agricultural fields. Those who can afford it buy water at Rs30 for a bucket of 20 litres; it is fetched from Naseer canal, which is located a kilometre away from the village. However, this water body reportedly receives waste from a nearby sugar mill.

The majority of the community, constrained by resources, still depends on bore water for all needs. Even the people who can afford to buy water to drink have no option but to use the contaminated underground water for cooking, bathing, washing and livestock needs. The huge reliance of the villagers on underground water over the decades has led to a steep decline in the water table, aggravating their miseries.

Contamination issue

The expert team Majidano was referring to included Prof Mohammad Yar Khuhawar of Sindh University Jamshoro that carried out an extensive study of Tando Allahyar district’s groundwater quality in 2008-09.

The study found the water to be contaminated with high levels of arsenic (up to 300ppb). The recommended world standard is 10ppb and the national standard is 50ppb.

“We observed an apparent correlation between public health and arsenic levels in the water,” Prof Khuhawar says, adding that later, his team took skin specialists to the area and created community awareness about the arsenic threat.

Women and young children, he explains, are more vulnerable because they spend most of their time at home and are more dependent on underground water. The main source of arsenic exposure, he says, is through arsenic-contaminated drinking water, food cooked in that water and the consumption of milk of animals reared on arsenic-contaminated water.

Tando Allahyar DCO Rasheed Zardari says that though he wasn’t aware of the water issues being faced by residents in this particular village, the government has installed 32 reverse osmosis plants in the district in recent years.

“The third and fourth phase of the project is pending owing to funds’ shortage,” he says. “We have also stopped a sugar mill from releasing its waste into the canal after the issue was highlighted by the judicial commission.” He admits, though, that the canal’s water had been found unsafe for drinking purposes.

Dr Ghulam Murtaza of the Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources says that the issue of arsenic contamination is old and many areas in both Punjab and Sindh are affected by high levels of arsenic contamination.

“For instance, almost half of district Khair­pur has been found to have arsenic contamination in its groundwater. Other areas include Pir Jo Goth, Gambat and Rani Pur,” he says.

A number of tehsils in the districts of Ghotki, Sukkur, Dadu, Naushahro Feroze, Jamshoro, Mitiari and parts of Thatta, he says, have groundwater with high levels of arsenic.

“The district of Tando Allahyar and Tando Mohammad Khan have been found to be severely affected,” he points out, adding that water quality in most parts of Sindh is poor also because of high TDS (total dissolved solids), turbidity and microbial contamination.

“Some areas have water with high levels of nitrate while others have more fluoride than permissible limits. The problem of arsenic contamination, however, is on the lower side or within the permissible range in districts like Larkana, Kashmore, Kandhkot, Shikarpur, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar and Nawabshah (excluding two tehsils). A similar situation prevails in the urban areas of Hyderabad, Karachi and Sukkur supplied with surface water,” he explains.

He emphasises the need for studies to test soil and sediments at different depths so that an effective strategy can be planned to address the issue.

The problem of arsenic contamination in water, experts say, has been found mainly in districts located along the River Indus. Explaining why, Dr Viqar Hussain of Karachi University’s geology department says that minerals containing arsenic are brought by the River Indus from mountain terrains, which get deposited along the plains.

“These young sediments are subjected to leaching into aquifers due to human factors like unlined sanitation, open-pit latrines near aquifers or water bodies, extensive groundwater irrigation and heavily irrigated crops (wheat, rice and sugar) both in Punjab and Sindh.”

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2017