Water-related diseases cost economy Rs 112bn a year - Staff Report

Daily Times - ISLAMABAD: Water and hygiene related diseases cost Pakistan’s economy Rs 112 billion per year while 250,000 children of less than five years of age die every year due to diarrheal diseases in the country.

Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) Chief Technical Officer Zaffar Sabri expressed these views at a seminar arranged in connection with the ‘World Water Day’ at the head office of PPAF here on Monday.

He said more than 1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water – a basic necessity. “Although Pakistan is blessed with adequate surface and ground water resources, however, rapid population growth, urbanisation and unsustainable water consumption practices have placed immense stress on quality as well as quantity of water resources in the country,” he added. In Pakistan alone, he said, 38.5 million people lack access to safe drinking water and 50.7 million people are deprived of access to improved sanitation.

He said over 180,000 individuals have benefited from the PPAF’s water-related interventions like Drought Mitigation and Preparedness Projects (DMPPs), Integrated Water Resource Management Projects (IWRM), micro-hydels, provision of potable water, etc across Pakistan.

Highlighting the role of PPAF in bringing relief to communities suffering from water scarcity, he said that the PPAF was running a number of water-related projects through its state-of-art Pakistan Water Management Centre (PWMC) established with an aim to safeguarding against vulnerability related to water scarcity and water-related disasters.

To date, the PWMC has completed work on 25 Drought Mitigation and Preparedness Projects consisting of 1,657water-focused interventions, collectively benefiting communities in 16 drought-affected districts. Impact studies, such as those related to DMPP Khipro, DMPP Soon Valley and Community Physical Infrastructure (CPI) Punjab attempt to quantitatively measure the success of water related interventions on the agricultural economy. The overall results demonstrate a marked improvement in some key indicators such as yield per acre, time saving and increase in water availability.

The PPAF’s Integrated Water Efficient Irrigation (IWEI) projects were implemented at the village level for better management of community water resources by combining four to five interventions including sprinkler/drip irrigation, water channels, water course lining and conduits. To date, a total of 100 such projects have collectively benefited over 8,200 households.

Similarly, the PPAF had contributed immensely to the lives of the isolated mountain communities in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral region through a series of small scale Micro Hydroelectric Power Projects addressing cooking, heating and lighting needs of households and community-based productiveness through sustainable power generation.

Sindh Coastal Areas Development Programme (SCAD) was another initiative of PPAF, focusing on integrated development of infrastructure assets. Under SCAD 561 schemes have so far been initiated in the region including protection works for reducing vulnerability to sea intrusion, improved sanitation and communication facilities as well as introduction of innovative solutions for provisioning of safe drinking water and electricity through tapping renewable sources of energy.