Record rains – but Pakistan is dying for water

Omar Waraich in the Independent (UK): Pakistan is a place used to wretched ironies but few have been so starkly drawn as the one that haunts it this weekend. Record-breaking rainfall has brought floods which have so far killed more than 800 – all in a country that faces a water crisis so severe it will stalk the country for decades after the present torrents have receded.

The lack of clean drinking water has led to a diarrhoea epidemic, with an estimated 630 children dying each day from the disease. Nearly a third of Pakistan's 175 million people lack access to clean drinking water, and water availability per person has fallen from about 5,000 cubic metres in 1947, when the country was founded, to only a fifth as much today.

The lack of clean water threatens the lives of its poor and weakens its sagging economy as a rapidly growing population and parched agricultural sector are deprived of crucial supplies for drinking and irrigation. Despite the national and global attention that is given to the country's troubles with terrorism, insurgency and a fragile political order, it may be Pakistan's little-noticed water crisis that costs the greatest number of lives. In the long term, this may prove its most destabilising political issue. According to a recent report, water and sanitation-related diseases cost Pakistan's national economy nearly £1bn a year. Yet critics say that the government has paid scant attention to the problem and has approached it wrong-headedly. A new water policy is emphasising the need to develop new water filtration plants and adopt better hygiene practices. There is a plan in place to build over 6,000 new water filtration plants, but little progress is in evidence….

The Jehlum River Bridge at Jehlum (in the Punjab province of Pakistan) from Sarai Alamgir side, shot by Khalid Mahmood, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license