KARACHI: What other calamity are we waiting for? Millions of people in this province are compelled to drink and use highly contaminated water. The government knows all facts but is not ready to act whereas the media and civil society haven’t taken a strong stance on the issue.

Shahab Usto, senior advocate whose petition led to the formation of a judicial commission on drinking water, voiced his frustration in these words at a discussion held on Friday at a local hotel.

The dialogue on the report submitted by the commission to the Supreme Court this year in February was organised by Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment.

‘Karachi’s people don’t effectively raise their voice for basic issues’

Mr Usto’s presentation on the subject followed a short documentary titled Killer Water based on the facts collected during the commission’s detailed visits to a number of cities, looking into the causes of government failure in providing safe drinking water and clean environment to people in Sindh.

The evidence collected by the commission showed that the whole province didn’t have a mechanism to safely dispose of its domestic as well as its hazardous medical and industrial waste. Untreated waste was discharged into rivers, canals and other channels, which also served as sources of drinking water.

“The data submitted by the irrigation department shows that there are 800 points in the province where effluent is discharged into water bodies whereas more than 80 per cent of water samples collected by Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources from all over Sindh were found to be unsafe for drinking,” he told the audience.

The commission, Mr Usto pointed out, had submitted two reports so far, the latest one showed that the government had demonstrated no sense of urgency over the public health disaster exposed by the commission’s findings and was non-compliant so far [to the court directives], though no one had contested the reports of water and sewage testing results.

“In fact, water quality in Karachi has further deteriorated after the court gave directives to the government after reviewing commission’s report.

“Early this year, 80pc samples in Karachi were found to be contaminated but this number rose to 91.7pc in July,” he said, adding that overall 460 samples were collected from underground and surface water sources in the province which were found to be contaminated with harmful bacteria and toxic chemicals.

The commission, he said, visited a number of waste treatment plants in the province and all were found non-functional. Similar conditions prevailed at the filter plants.

“Hospitals and educational institutions in a number of districts presented an equally horrifying picture and most were found to be supplying contaminated water,” he said, questioning the governance in Sindh.

“The government hasn’t yet submitted compliance report to the court, which had directed it to take a number of steps. This included immediate rehabilitation and functioning of waste treatment plants and dissolving the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and transferring their functions back to the local councils,” he said.

Expressing his disappointment over media and civil society’s response, he said that the media “didn’t take the issue seriously” whereas civil society hadn’t realised the gravity of the problem.

Sharing his opinion on the situation, Farhan Anwar, seasoned urban planner, said that positive expectations from government departments plagued by political interference, lacking autonomy and facing financial and technical bankruptcy would be unrealistic.

“We need to redefine the role of government to an entity limited to policymaking, planning and acting as a regulator. There is a need to explore innovative options, such as public-private partnerships and formalising informal practices,” he said, citing examples from other countries where such reforms worked.

Later, replying to a question, Mr Usto said that the state of civic conditions were better in Punjab because the province had a competitive culture and strong political opposition.

“In contrast, there is no opposition in Sindh and the PPP has gotten a walkover,” he said, regretting that though Karachi was the most educated city in the country, its people couldn’t effectively raise their voice on basic issues.

On the waste treatment plants in Karachi, he said even if all were made functional, they could only treat 150MGD of effluent whereas 350MGD waste would still go into the sea.

Earlier, engineer Pervaiz Sadiq, an avid scuba diver, spoke about how Karachi’s pristine beaches and marine environment had degraded owing to continued discharge of toxic waste into the sea.

“The habitat of Churna Island is also being destroyed due to increased pollution,” he said, calling for steps to regulate recreational activities there and declaring the site as officially protected.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2017