Daily Times

KARACHI: The number of people without access to clean water has gone up internationally.

Pakistan is one of the top 10 countries with the lowest access to clean water, a fresh report revealed.

WaterAid, an international non-profit organisation determined to produce clean water, decent toilets and a hygienic environment for everyone has published The Water Gap – The State of the World’s Water 2018 on the occasion of World Water Day, which is held every year on March 22.

According to the report, 844 million people are now struggling globally to access life’s most essential requirement – almost 200 million more than previously counted.

Around 289,000 children under five years of age, die each year of diarrhea directly linked to dirty water, inadequate toilets and poor hygiene. This shouldn’t be normal. It is a crisis we cannot ignore.

New data that links water access to household wealth also shows that even in progressive countries, there are still vast discrepancies between the richest and the poorest.

According to the report, Pakistan falls at #9 among top 10 countries with lowest access to clean water. Out of the total population of 207 million, 21 million people don’t have access to clean water.

According to the report, 88.5 percent of people in Pakistan have access to clean water close to home where the richest have more access to clean water as compared to the poor.

“Pakistan, too, is facing severe challenges; industrialisation and the demands of agriculture, depleted and increasingly saline groundwater, rapid urbanisation and drought have all taken their toll. Here, too, the disparity between the rich and the poor becomes clear: while nearly all of the country’s wealthiest have access to clean water, this applies to only 79 percent of its poorest,” the report revealed.

However the report suggests that since 2000, Pakistan has also improved in providing water access.

“Pakistan has reached 44 million people since 2000 with water – yet we see that while almost all its wealthy ones have access to clean water close to home, one in five people living in poverty do not,” the report revealed. Lack of financing and political priority, lack of institutions capable of delivering and maintaining water service, lack of effective taxation and tariffs, location and land tenure, discrimination of caste, class and political affiliation and disasters and displacements are major reasons because of which people are globally deprived of access to water.

The report warned that water – which is the world’s most precious resource is becoming increasingly scarce for too much of the population. Because of this situation like Cape Town which hit the headlines for declaring a date for Day Zero – the day on which city taps run dry, is emerging.

“Long queues and limited water supplies are already happening in many other less headline-worthy locales, reminding us of the need for better and fairer management of Earth’s water supply,” report cautioned.

WaterAid called for urgent steps from the governments to ensure safe drinking water as per UN Global Goals.

Published in Daily Times, March 22^th 2018.