Contaminated water only option

Text and Photos by Amar Guriro

About 150,000 residents of Khipro Town and 10,000 residents of other small towns and union council in Khipro taluka are forced to consume polluted water due to the outdated water supply systems and the minor canals supplying water to the system. Khipro taluka is an administrative subdivision of Sanghar District and is the largest taluka of Pakistan in terms of area, as geographically it touches major cities like Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot, while its vastly scattered Achhro Thar or ‘White Desert’ area touches the Indian border. During a visit to Khipro, this scribe found that despite being located on the edges of the famous Khipro Canal, the residents of this ill-fated town were not receiving clean drinking water.

A large number of the people living around Shah Bux Minor, a small inland waterway that supplies water to the town’s water supply, have no other choice but to fetch water from contaminated ponds. Due to the absence of freshwater, abdominal disease and hepatitis, especially in children and women, are common. “Around 35 percent of the total population of the taluka suffers from some sort of waterborne disease round the year,” said taluka hospital in-charge Dr Iqbal Qaimkhani. People in other towns of Khipro taluka, including Khahi, Dhilyar, Perunmal and Bhit Bhaiti, also suffer from contaminated drinking water.

Pouring of contaminated water in to River Indus

By Amar Guriro
KARACHI: Health experts fear that the already serious state of waterborne diseases could worsen once the contaminated water is released from Manchhar Lake into the Indus River, which supplies the city with drinking water.
They expressed their concern after the recent decision by the irrigation department authorities, Hyderabad District Government, Hyderabad Development Authority and Hyderabad Water and Sanitation Authority to release highly contaminated water from the Manchhar Lake downstream of the River Indus, from where people of eight districts of lower Sindh - including Karachi -acquire potable water.
Diarrhoea, abdominal pain and vomiting are common in the summer, especially among the minors living in slum settlements; however, these maladies have increased after the recent rains and the release of contaminated water could worsen the situation.
Sindh Culture Minister and Member of Provincial Assembly from Thatta district Sassui Palijo warned that if the decision is not revoked, half of Thatta’s population could suffer terribly.
“The decision would bring a big disaster in the cities of southern Sindh. If the authorities release highly contaminated water from the Manchhar Lake in the downstream of the River Indus, the situation would be so complicated that we would have to call the National Disaster Management Authority to rescue the people,” Palijo said.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Manchhar Lake was once supposed to be one of the biggest freshwater lakes of South Asia, but in the last few decades, the Water and Power Development Authority and different federal department started pouring highly contaminated agricultural waste from northern districts of Sindh and Balochistan and industrial effluents from Punjab into the lake through the Right Bank Outfall Drain, destroying the lake completely.

After the substantial contamination in the lake, the authorities started releasing the contaminated water into the Indus River. In a recent meeting, the officials of the irrigation department, Hyderabad District Government, Hyderabad Development Authority and Hyderabad Water and Sanitation Authority announced to release contaminated lake water into the Indus River with the ratio of 1:50 cusec, which means if there are 50,000 cusecs of water in the river, 1,000 cusecs of contaminated water could be released into it.
Currently, there are 26,000 cusecs of water flowing in downstream Sukkur Barrage; so, during the meeting, the officials decided to release 500 cusecs in instalments.
However, as usual, after releasing the first instalment, nobody is checking and the water is being released in high quantities, making the river water highly contaminated.
In 2004, more than 50 people died in Hyderabad due to the increased ratio of the total dissolved salts in the river water after the release of the contaminated water from the lake.
Through different canals at the Kotri Barrage, the water was supplied to different districts for agriculture and drinking purposes. Through the Kalri Baghar Feeder, water is released into the Keenjhar Lake, which is later supplied to the districts of Karachi and Thatta.
The agricultural waste, industrial effluent from the industries of Kotri and Nooriabad and other contaminations caused by picnickers visiting the Keenjhar Lake – the only source of drinking water for millions of people of the districts of Thatta and Karachi - is already a matter of concern for environmentalists and health experts; and the recent torrential rains in southern Sindh have increased the contamination and the recent decision would bring more misfortunes.
When contacted, Hyderabad Administrator and District Coordination Officer Aftab Khatri said, “We take four samples twice a day and get it tested from the laboratory to check whether the ratio is correct, so there is no need to worry.”

Tainted water lands 41 in hospital

By Amar Guriro

KARACHI: Forty-one people, including 24 children and six women living in the slum settlements in Landhi and Korangi, were hospitalised with abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea on Monday, after allegedly consuming the contaminated water that was supplied to their areas. However, no death was reported till the filing of this report.

The residents of Kashmir Colony, Bengali Para and Sherpao Colony claimed that many people fell sick after consuming the water that is supplied to their areas at 11am every day.

Several officials of the Sindh Health Department rushed to the affected colonies after the news broke out, and shifted 41 patients to different hospitals. Landhi Town Health Officer Dr Khalid Ghauri said 30 patients were taken to the Sindh Government Hospital Korangi and 11 to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.

“Most of them have been discharged after treatment and the remaining ones are also in a stable condition now,” said Dr Ghauri.

Citing the reason behind the incident, he said since most of these colonies were slum settlements with no proper system of water supply and sanitation, the residents acquire illegal water supply connections that pass from sewerage lines, and such incidents occur when drinking water becomes tainted with sewage.

In Karachi, people living in slum settlements usually fall victim to the faulty sewerage and water supply systems, especially when sewage seeps into the drinking water supply pipes.

The National Conservation Strategy states that almost 40 percent of the total deaths in Pakistan were related to waterborne diseases.

The World Health Organisation also reports that 32 percent of hospital beds in Pakistan were occupied with patients suffering from waterborne diseases and around 60 percent of total infant deaths in the country were caused by water infections. Another recent study states that in urban centres of the country, around 2 million wet tonnes of human excreta was produced annually, of which around 50 percent are dumped into rivers and sea.

Some experts are also of the view that besides sewage, industrial waste also seeps into the drinking water supply pipes in Landhi and Korangi, causing diseases among the residents.