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.

Lower Sindh faces health hazards

By Amar Guriro

The discharge of heavily contaminated domestic and industrial waste into Phuleli Canal in Hyderabad continues unabatedly and no relevant authority has taken notice of the grave threat this situation poses.

A large portion of the province, particularly the lower Sindh, has brackish and saline underground water due to the influence of the sea and water shortage in the Indus River.

Phuleli Canal is one of the important canals of River Indus that provides potable water to more than three million human population of three major districts in lower Sindh along with the Akram Wah (also known as Lined Channel).

During a recent visit to the canal, this scribe found several illegal outlets pouring sewerage water into it. Since there is no restriction whatsoever regarding the disposal of waste in these canals, there are dozens of drainage outlets from the entire Hyderabad city.

The discharging of untreated sewage, garbage, industrial waste, effluent from laundry factories, cattle excreta from hundreds of cattle farms established on the banks of the canal, and waste products from hospitals and slaughterhouses into the an area over 20-km of Phuleli Canal and partly into the Lined Channel.

According to Badin Development and Research Organisation (BDRO), an organisation working on water contamination, all the hospital waste from Hyderabad city’s 40 main sewer nullahs.

Beside that there are effluents from 1,000 big laundries, effluent from 500 cattle farms situated on both sides of the canal, toxic waste from 12 plastic factories and domestic sewage. These all sources of pollution are located in Tando Muhammad Khan, Matli and Talhar towns is poured into Phuleli Canal.

“The heavily contaminated sewage and garbage, toxic chemicals, dyes and other heavy metals in the industrial effluents as well as wastes from slaughterhouses and animal excretions have converted these water bodies into poisonous canals,” said BDRO’s Muhammad Khan Samoo.

His organisation, BDRO has recently conducted a laboratory test after taking several water samples from Phuleli Canal and found that the water is highly toxic and not safe for human consumption.

“The recent results of the water samples show that contaminated water is causing abdominal diseases in resident of cities and towns carrying potable water from Phuleli Canal,” said Samoo.

On the other hand, District Nazim Hyderabad Kanwar Naveed Jamil justified the pouring of highly contaminated industrial and domestic waste from Hyderabad city.
“It is not new phenomenon and has been going on since 1947. I am not responsible for the industrial waste in Phuleli Canal and you should ask the people from the related department,” said Nazim.

He added that his government has recently started treatment plants so that sewerage water can be treated and then poured into the canal. “Though Hyderabad is not taking a single bucket of water from this canal but we have planned three major treatment plants for the lower districts purely on humanitarian grounds,” he said while admitting that all the sewerage of Hyderabad city is being poured in the canals or in Indus River.

“I have no idea exactly how much sewerage water is produced daily in the city, as some portion of it is poured in canals and other portions are either poured in Indus River or used for agricultural purposes,” he said.

He maintained that the district governments of district Tando Muhammad Khan and Badin are responsible to arrange the treatment plants for the sewerage water of Hyderabad that is being poured into the Phuleli Canal as they are taking potable water from it.

The federal and provincial government must take serious notice of the activities, which are causing water contamination and must come forward to save the people living in the lower districts of Sindh.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Daily Times

‘Dirty business’ stalls potable water project

Text and photos by Amar Guriro

KARACHI: Camels grazing in the mangrove forest, small fishing boats anchored on shore and naked children playing with dead fish. This scene can be a great opening to a documentary however reality paints a different picture of it.

No one knows the decades of pain the residents of Kaka Pir Goth, a small fishing village near Hawksbay in the outskirts of the city, have suffered. The small village is one of the oldest seaside settlements of the city.
Driving speeding vehicles on broken roads in the humidity, the hurrying picnickers heading towards the huts spread along Hawksbay and Sandspit beaches have never bothered to stop at the village and ask how life is doing there.

Locals say that more than 100,000 picnickers cross the village on Sundays, but despite such a large number visiting the area, the miseries of the village have never made headlines.

Comprising of 127 households and having a population of 650, Kaka Pir is deprived of the basic amenity of potable water. The federal government laid down a pipeline in the area in the late 70s however, it was never made functional and during the last three decades, the villagers either buy potable water or bring it form far away places, hoping that one day they will get water from the government.
However, their dreams remain just dreams until, discovering their difficulties, a multinational paint manufacturing company financed a two kilometer long pipeline project to provide potable water to the village. The news spread like wildfire. However it didn’t take long for their dreams to be crushed as when some influential people of the area, who sold water to the villagers, got wind of the news, they forcibly halted the project.
The construction material for the project is lying idle in the heat. “After hearing the news, we thought that at last our miseries will end, but now it seems we have to suffer for another three decades for water,” said a village fisherwoman.

The village elders remember the winter morning in the late 70s when a team of five arrived and announced that the federal government has planned a water supply scheme for the village. “I remember the day when the team came to our village and we heard that the then Prime Minister Zulfqar Ali Bhutto ordered the provision of water.
The team came to survey the village before laying the pipeline,” said elderly Hashim, adding that the villagers were so happy that no one went fishing and remained in the village to celebrate the news.

After the team’s visit, labourers started digging in the village and the pipeline was laid. Though, the pipeline was installed, the residents of Kaka Pir Goth never received a drop of water. “The pipeline project was completed and then Bhutto was hanged, so authorities forgot to supply water to the pipeline,” said UC Councilor Abdul Ghani.

For the past three decades, water remains a precious commodity for the villagers. The village residents have several relatives in other coastal villages and none of them agree to wed their daughters to the people in this village because of the water problem. From this, one can gauge how the absence of potable water socially affects the people. The nearest place from where water can be bought is two kilometers away.

As the villagers have to go a long distance to fetch water, they consume it with caution and thus, many suffer from kidney related problems. During the visit, this scribe found several physically disabled people; anyone could have can guess that they might be victims of the lack of potable water.

The reason this scribe visited the village was because of the good news of water being supplied there, but the news became sour when the influential people practiced their influence.
The villagers were so afraid of the ‘influential’ that no one dared to name names. “We don’t want any conflict, we are thankful to the company who has came forward with the project and we request that the pipeline be completed so we can finally get potable water,” said a resident.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Daily Times