In a letter sent to provincial chief secretaries, the chairman of the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) has strongly cautioned against dumping untreated wastewater into rivers and canals in order to “safeguard the constitutional right of citizens to clean and sustainable water resources.” Whether this will make any impact on a nation notorious for taking everything for granted, and long accustomed to foaming drains and foul-smelling canals, is far from certain.
On paper, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act explicitly forbids discharges of effluent or waste above the National Environmental Quality Standards, and yet an estimated 34 billion litres of untreated wastewater were entering rivers and drains daily as far back as the mid-1990s.
According to recent estimates by the Pakistan Medical Association, nearly two-thirds of Pakistan’s people lack access to clean drinking water, while poor water quality contributes to 30 per cent of illnesses and 40 per cent of deaths. The burden is not shared equally. Those with means buy bottled water, filters or tanker supplies, while the rest drink what flows through compromised pipes and open drains.
The consequences are glaringly visible in the Ravi and Sutlej, with the Ravi found to have among the highest cumulative concentrations of pharmaceutical pollutants in the world. Further south, Manchar Lake– once a source of fresh water for Sindh’s fishermen–now receives streams of agricultural runoff and domestic sewage, leaving it saline and unfit for drinking or irrigation.
IRSA’s letter acknowledges that the Indus Basin Irrigation System supplies 90 per cent of the country’s irrigation water and underpins national food security. However, successive administrations have closed their eyes, allowing rivers to become dumping grounds for municipal and industrial effluent. Section 11 of the environmental law imposes fines and possible prison terms for operators who discharge waste above approved limits, but enforcement is sporadic, and polluters continue to externalise the costs.
More than administrative negligence, it is a sustained violation of the right to life under Article 9, which the courts have repeatedly read to include dignity, health and a clean environment.
The Ravi is legally a river, but in places it has become an open sewer. Elsewhere in Karachi, the mixing of sewage and stormwater in colonial-era drains (despite treatment plants) means every monsoon turns the city into a lethal swamp.
Dismissing this as an inevitable cost of development is dangerous. The issue intersects with climate change and public health. Pakistan’s population is projected to exceed 300 million within a generation, and glacial retreat could reduce Indus flows by up to 40 per cent. If the country cannot ensure that existing flows are free from toxins and pathogens, shortages will soon be accompanied by an epidemic of diseases. The provinces would do well to treat this advisory as an ultimatum rather than a polite request. Treatment plants, inspections and prosecutions must now replace press releases, meetings and ritual expressions of concern. *