ISLAMABAD, Nov 25: A countrywide consultation process has been initiated to work out national drinking water policy to provide guidelines for the provision of clean water at local government level, official sources at Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pepa) told Dawn.

“The policy document is being prepared through a process of wide ranging consultations between federal ministries, and with provincial and local governments, non-governmental organisations and citizens,” they said.

Pepa will act as the focal point for the consultations, which, officials believe, will be summed up by the year end or in the first week of January. The policy document will also be presented to the federal cabinet for consultation.

In the preceding years, drinking water contamination in major cities including Karachi and Lahore has become a serious problem for the local governments, and the exercise has been started to provide policy guidelines to handle the predicament.

The initiative has also been taken in the face of ever increasing water-borne diseases. According to independent estimates, more than 50 per cent hospital beds across the country are occupied by the patients suffering from water-related diseases.

It will not be an easy task to prepare one uniform policy for 160 million people living in large cities, towns, villages and in arid lands and mountains. During the consultation process, questions whether clean drinking water was a basic human right or a social and economic good like food, will also be addressed.

There is another question which is bothering policy makers: standards. It will also be debated whether Pakistan should adopt World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines on drinking water standards immediately or gradually? A key WHO guideline is that water can be termed safe if no faecal coliform bacteria is detected in any 100 millilitre sample.

Some argue that a WHO guideline establishes the benchmark, which must not be compromised. However, others think what is not practical to enforce is not useful. Pepa will be posing these questions to ministers and provincial government in the coming months.

It is worth mentioning here that according to a UN report this year, life-saving investments in water and sanitation are dwarfed by military spending in most developing nations. In Ethiopia, the military budget is 10 times the water and sanitation budget and in Pakistan, 47 times, it says.

The annual report of UN Development programme notes that Pakistan’s military budget was 47 per cent more than its spending on clean water and sanitation projects that could help reduce childhood deaths and boost development.

Clean Drinking Water for All, a multi-billion project of the federal government to provide water filtration plants at union council level, is not doing well. With the national drinking water policy in place, the government might be able to handle this project more effectively.