Aoun Sahi
FAISALABAD, Jul 21 2006 (IPS) – Pakistan has an ambitious plan to provide drinking water to all its citizens by the end of 2006, but recent outbreaks of gastroenteritis in several major cities of this South Asian country have raised question marks on its viability.
In May and June more than 40 people most of them living in the major urban areas of Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Deri Gazi Khan, Gujranwala and Sheikhupura died of dehydration and other complications arising from gastroenteritis.
Worst hit was this city, Pakistan s third most populous and located in the north-east of the country, where at least 16 people were killed during a gastroenteritis outbreak in about a week.
The families of the dead said the infection was spread through water supplied by the Faisalabad Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), especially in the densely populated Ghulam Muhammad Abad (GM Abad).
It was discovered that pipes supplying water to GM Abad pass through a sewer that carries effluents from some industrial units. Moreover, the deaths occurred in an area barely 400 metres from the sewer.
Dr Rana Imran, district health officer of Faisalabad, says 70 percent of the infections were reported in the slums near GM Abad.
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These are the areas where the pipes have not been changed for the last 47 years. The last time old pipes were replaced in parts of the city was in 1982, says Imran. The average age of the water supply pipes in Faisalabad is around 22 years.
According to Imran, more than 25,000 people, complaining of abdominal cramps and diarrhoea, had visited government and private hospitals in Faisalabad.
At least eight people, mostly children, have died in our area, says Fazal Din, who lives in a slum in GM Abad. His seven-year-old son Ahsan Ali was one of the first victims.
Ahsan died in mid-May, after water supply to the community had been resumed following a two-day stoppage caused by disruption of electricity.
On May 18 when the water supply resumed, it had a foul smell but people drank it because they had no choice and many became ill, says Fazal Din. Ahsan was among them. Though the poor quality of water supplied in Faisalabad is no secret, it is difficult to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the water in the taps and the deaths.
The samples collected from four houses of the affected area were sent to National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (NIBGE) on May 19 but none of them showed diarrhoea-causing bacteria, says Dr Muhammad Javed, executive district health officer, Faisalabad.
He added that other factors such as contaminated food could also have caused the deaths, and not just the water.
NIBGE director Dr Yusuf Zafar, averred that no pathogens were found in samples but said they did have high chlorine content.
The concentration of chlorine in the water was 0.1 parts per million (ppm) or 250 percent above the acceptable level, which is 0.04, says Zafar. How can pathogens survive in water laced with such a huge quantity of chlorine?
Experts say high concentrations of chlorine in the water do not have immediate health impacts but exposure to the chemical over a long period could lead to various ailments including cancer.
In Pakistan, local governments are responsible for supplying drinking water but the public-sector utilities are cash-strapped and riddled by management problems.
A four-member committee is investigating the outbreak of the disease and those found responsible will be punished, says Rana Zahid Tauseef, the nasim or mayor of Faisalabad district. The government has also begun replacing the old water pipes.
However, that alone may not help resolve the problem of water supply.
Activists say city officials have been unable to locate the leaks from where contaminated water may be entering the pipes, so some settlements are always under threat.
The planning departments of cities where the problem has been seen are using very old maps and cannot locate the leaks, says Malik Nazir Ahmed Wattoo, team coordinator at Anjuman Samaj-i-Behbood, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Faisalabad. They plan to replace entire pipelinesà that may take a very long time and could also be very expensive.
The water is contaminated not because it is not treated, but because the old pipes have leaks and many of them pass through sewers or run alongside them, he adds.
Faisalabad is among those cities that do not have a single water filtration plant and therefore, getting clean water remains a dream, says Mian Hamid Sultan, coordinator Faisalabad Urban Resource Centre, another NGO.
WASA s underground water storage tanks are also not properly protected, says Sultan. Protective walls around the storages are also not high enough or well-guarded, he adds.
A WASA official in Faisalabad said his department has not received a penny for new projects since 2001 and that 80 percent of its revenues are spent on paying electricity bills.
He adds that Tauseef, who is also the chairman of the WASA there, has not convened a single meeting with water officials since being elected to the position in December 2005.
We have been given no funds for the last six years, so how can we be held responsible for this tragedy? asks Ras Masood, managing director of WASA, Faisalabad.
If water is contaminated, the whole city should be having the same problems because we are supplying from the same source, adds Waseem Ahmad Hashmi, director for operations and maintenance of the agency.
As officials pass the buck among different departments, residents in the poor areas of the city continue to fall victim to water-borne diseases which tend to peak during the rainy season from June to September.
Experts say the larger problem could be the management of the system, which is seldom questioned.
Generally, the public sector has failed to provide clean drinking water, says Naeem Ahmed, director of Pehla Qaddam, an NGO based in the northern city of Lahore that lies to the east of Faisalabad. It is perhaps time we try the private suppliers.
(*Asia Water Wire is a series of news and features, coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific, on water and development from the region.)
