Water insecurity: A major challenge for upcoming Govt to be tackled in KP
PESHAWAR (APP): Khayam Khan, a 26-year-old resident of Mohib Banda village is used to bring two gallon of water on motorbike after groundwater of his hometown became unhealthy following the last year devastated flood in River Kabul that completely inundated the low laying areas of Nowshera district.
After performing duties at school, Khayam regularly come to Pabbi tehsil to fill two gallons of clean water from tehsil municipal administration (TMA)’s office to meat his family’s requirements.
“The groundwater of my village became heavier and unhealthy after 2022 devastated flood, leaving him with no other option but to bring two gallon of clean drinking water from TMA filter plant to avoid possible water borne diseases,” he said while loading the water gallons on his bike .
“I have only one demand from election candidates of all political parties to provide us clean drinking water. Any candidate, who takes practical step for installation of a water filtration plant in my village would likely to attract overwhelming support of the voters,” he said.
Like Khayam, majority of residents of Mohib Banda and adjoining villages were bringing clean drinking water from tehsil Pabbi, Nowshera and Peshawar due to unhealthy water.
“The water situation is going to worsen in future in Nowshera, Peshawar and Charsadda districts due to floods in Rivers Kabul besides climate change and global warming and time has come to expedite work on Mohmand dam to address water problems and floods devastation in future” said Niaz Khan, former Chief Conservator of Forest while talking to APP on Wednesday.
He said with the current 30-day water storage capacity, some 207 million people will face scarcity of water with less than 500 cubic meters available per person by 2025.
Inspite of having Indus River and over 5,000 largest glaciers, water shortage was posing serious challenges for agriculture sector due to waste of the precious resource.
He said nearly 97% of water was used for agriculture, and the remaining 3% is utalized for domestic, industrial and other purposes and the insecurity keeps on fluctuating due to mismanagement of water, political and meteorological reasons in the past.
Niaz Khan claimed that per capita annual water availability in Pakistan has reduced from 1500 cubic meters in 2009 to 1017 cubic meters in 2021 and it is estimated that by 2025 it will fall to 274 million acre-feet (MAF) while the resources remain the same at 191 MAF, a demand-supply gap of approximately 83 MAF.
Hr said seven million acre feet of water was lost to the sea every year due to lack of water reservoirs, adding Pakistan has dams with capacity to reserve water only for 30 days while in India it’s 220 days.
China and India had built 22,000 and 4500 small, medium and big dams respectively but Pakistan has comparatively constructed very less number of dams despite having huge hydro water’s potential stretched from Hamalya mountains to Karakuram and Hinduskash regions.
He said the water level in ground will further drop in upcoming years due to massive loss of water by the car washing centres.
Wapda authorities told APP besides completion of 108MW Golen Gol dam in Chitral, the federal government accelerated work on Mohmand dam of 800MW with 1.293 MAF water storage capacity that after completion would supplement/irrigate 160,000 acres land and about 18,237 acres of new land with annual benefits of Rs2.23 billion.
Likewise, 300 million gallons water per day will also be provided to Peshawar for drinking purpose with benefits of Rs.957 million from Mohmand dam.
To address problems of clean drinking and rehabilitate water supply schemes in major cities of KP, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Cities Improvement Project (KPCIP) was launched at Peshawar, Mardan, Kohat, Abbottabad, and Mingora Swat.
KPCIP was funded by the Asian Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The project was designed to counter climate change, depleting groundwater levels, and increasing waterborne health concerns.
Under the Swat greater water supply scheme, water from river Swat would be treated and supplied to the residents of Mingora city. Additionally, streams and springs’ water to be channeled to a treatment plant near Choona in Abbottabad and the treated water would be distributed through an extensive network of pipelines that would reach every household.
