Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) Thursday said that only 15 percent water of 24 major cities in the country was safe for drinking.
Due to population boom, water contamination and scarcity has increased, said Director General Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) Lubna Bukhari while addressing the launching of a project ‘Ensuring Access to Safe Drinking Water’ here. The ceremony was organised by The Network for Consumer Protection, with the financial support of USAID, and addressed by officials from Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Capital Development Authority (CDA), Environment Protection Agency (EPA), National Institute of Health (NIH) and representatives from academia and civil society. DG PCRWR said for combating the water-related issues PCRWR had launched national water quality programmes in 24 major cities of Pakistan which indicated that only 15 percent of the selected samples were safe for drinking. “Most of them had microbiological contamination and can cause various water-borne diseases,” she added. The lack of safe drinking water is an alarming cause of the widespread water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, worm infections, typhoid, and hepatitis A. According to a report of PCRWR, the mortality rate of children under-five due to ill-water conditions is 101 per 1000 children. Diarrheal infections kill 2 million every year. These numbers on mortality are enough to jolt even the most inefficient of governments to take serious action, then why is our governance failing to provide the most basic of rights to its citizens is incomprehensible. Not only is it extremely important to renew the water distribution system which has been in place in most parts of the country since the 1970s, but also the sanitation and sewage system, which is failing in the big cities and the sewage finds its way into the drinking water supply as per the report.
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