The very siphons which are used to extract water have become the bone of contention between political actors and Karachi’s administration, Dr Noman Ahmed, the chairperson of the NED University’s architecture and urban planning department, said on Wednesday.
“Despite drawing attention to this pressing issue, the authorities refuse to increase Karachi’s water quota from the Indus source which still stands at 200 cusecs or 600mgd,” he said while addressing a session catering to water and sanitation and transport issues at the three-day conference, “Managing Megacities”.
“Because of a surge in population and an uneven relationship between demand and supply, the urban water supply is bound to be affected. If we look at the consumption of drinking water, we can see that there are three groups, affluent, middle-income and low-income consuming premium brands, boiled or filtered water and tap water respectively.”
Ahmed said because of water leakages across the city that show the aging infrastructure, water theft has become an organised enterprise.
“According to a former managing director of the water board, 35 percent potable water is lost because of theft.”
Not only this, the practice of using suction devices has ultimately led to technological distortion while a blind eye has been turned to retail distribution. Coming to the responsibility of governance, he pointed out that the institutions themselves needed a saviour as the KSWB was under debt and owed more than Rs30 billion to international donors and was set to be privatised between 1995 and 1996 because it was in shambles. However when a KWSB representative was asked about the unequal distribution of water supply, he only offered an assurance that the board was working to achieve that.
With tankers patrolling the roads of the city, it appears that a service which was restricted for emergencies is now being used as an alternative to the normal water supply:
“This too has transformed into a commercial enterprise and given that it is responsible for 10 percent of the supply, it has enormous potential to expand,” Ahmed noted.
“But the KWSB was not the only one at fault. Only seven percent people pay their water bills because most believe that it’s a natural source hence they shouldn’t be paying at all.”
Ahmed also stressed the need for understanding that the inability to respond to complaints also affected the relationship between the consumers and the supplier which once more called for better management at the institution’s end.
Coming to solutions, Ahmed proposed four solutions where raw water from natural resources can be filtered and then supplied through tubes and pumping stations or ground water sources to be filtered and supplied. The other two solutions incurring higher costs involved reverse osmosis plants and ultraviolet filters or the usage of designated hydrants supplying to tankers which in turn provide water to the consumers.
Discussing the transport and mobility concerns, Dr Kenneth Button of the George Mason University stressed on the need for a mass transit system in the city. “Given that Karachi has more dwellers on a smaller area it’s easier to create ease in commuting because the majority of the routes aren’t too far away,” he added.
“Karachi happens to be a compact city and most people were pedestrians hence they needed to be facilitated.”
Vohra’s talk
The absence of a local government system for the last eight years has contributed a great deal to Karachi’s problems, the city’s deputy mayor said on Wednesday, writes Zeeshan Azmat.
“The city’s infrastructure is not in a good shape at all and broken roads, running sewers, lack of public transports and heaps of garbage are some of the major issues being faced by the citizens on a regular basis,” said Dr Arshad Abdullah Vohra while speaking as the chief guest on the second day of the three-day international conference titled “Managing Megacities 2016”.
“The ever increasing population, traffic mess, lack of awareness and insufficient funds and mechanism to address civic problems are also major challenges faced by Karachi,” he said.
Vohra said the lack of a local government system in the past had added to the city’s woes and now huge investment and manpower was required to resolve its basic problems.
He informed the audience that thye Sindh governor and the provincial government had assured financial support to the local government. “We can’t remove tons of garbage without special funding. The Sindh government should release a special fund to the local government to lift the garbage.
This city produces around 12,000 tonnes garbage daily and the municipal authority has only the capability of lifting 4,000 tonnes garbage. During the last eight years, no planning was formulated to perform this task because of which the conditions have worsened a lot.”
Unfortunately, he said, Karachi was not being given its due financial share although it contributed 98 percent of the tax revenue collected by the Sindh government and 68 percent to the federal government.
“We are in dialogue with the provincial government and hopeful that deserved financial share will be provided to the city.” He mentioned that projects like Bus Rapid Transit Service should have been included into the system years before.
He claimed that Karachi will soon be one of the world’s greatest cities. “The local government only has the authority to collect municipal tax but the irony is that 90 percent citizens don’t pay it.”
Despite being the country’s biggest city with the literacy rate of more than 70 percent, Karachi is a victim of financial injustices, he said.
Later, KU Department of Geography chairman Professor Dr Jamil Hasan Kazmi said environment and marine life preservation never remained the priority of our decision-makers.
He said water was available in surplus amount in Karachi, but a crisis had emerged due to the mismanagement of the local authorities. He blamed open head tanks as the biggest cause of dengue mosquitoes.
Kazmi suggested planting local plants and trees to cope with the increasing heat.
Syeda Hoor-ul-Ain of the Department of Public Administration, KU, while presenting her paper said Karachi as a megacity faced major transportation challenges ranging from rampant urbanisation and limited budgets to inefficient infrastructures.
She added that the issues of over-crowding, traffic congestion, and poor quality of service and ill-fitness of the vehicles are the emerging challenges in the transportation sector.
She revealed that 79 percent of the respondents of her survey mentioned that the poor quality of public buses adds to mental stress, which in turn affected their productivity and effectiveness at work.
Meanwhile, she added, 68 percent of the respondents indicated that public buses were unreliable, insecure and overcrowded; and, only 57 percent considered public buses as a safe mode of transport.
She said 55 percent of the female respondents, who commuted by public buses, said they felt insecure and faced sexual harassment while the East district had been rated as the most unsafe area for female commuters.
“Gender equality is growing at a fast pace at work and education in Karachi. There is an increasing number of women who leave for work and education from their homes. Provision of limited space in public transport for women commuters has become a major impediment in their mobility.”
The faculty members of Department of Public Administration, KU, Mustafa Hyder and Tehmina Faisal presenting their paper said that provision of clean water and sanitation facilities is a crucial aspect of governmental administrative institutions around the globe.
“This governmental responsibility becomes exceptionally critical in megacities such as Karachi, where resource management and distribution are not just sustainable and consistent patterns of operational implementation rather they require systematically engineered plans and projects based on contemporary standards of construction, delivery and maintenance mechanisms. Poor quality of public water supply can lead to social instability and a high level of stress.”
Zohair Ashir of the Hisaar Foundation said today Karachi was the seventh largest megacity in the world with a population of over 22 million people. As the years have passed, the realities of water availability, water regime, population growth and climate conditions have changed considerably. However, there has been no change in the ways that people use and manage water, he observed.
He warned that as a result of increased migration into the city and significant population growth, this gap will only become wider. Karachi’s water crisis will be exacerbated in the business as usual scenario.
He advised that there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in thinking about urban water management in general and in particular to transform the urban water utilities in order to make them effective service delivery institutions.