National Urban Sanitation Workshop: Floods hit sanitation, water facilities cost $182m

Islamabad: The recent catastrophic floods in the country have badly damaged sanitation, water, and hygiene facilities with an estimated cost of around $182 million.

Over 5.4 million people (16 per cent) from the 33 million people in flood-affected 84 districts moved from the use of protected to unprotected drinking water sources, and 6.3 million people (19 per cent) lost household sanitation with an estimated 950,000 household latrines, said speakers at National Urban Sanitation Workshop on Monday.

Over 100 representatives from national and international organizations and development partners participated in the inaugural session of the National Urban Sanitation Workshop to deliberate issues related to urban sanitation. The work was organised by the Ministry of Climate Change, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and the Islamic Development Bank.

They said that Pakistan made significant sanitation progress in the last decade reducing open defecation from 36 per cent in 2010 to 7 per cent in 2020. In urban areas, basic sanitation coverage is 82 per cent, however, data on safely managed sanitation is not available. Lack of safely managed sanitation systems in the country has led to the o contamination of most drinking water sources, they said. Speaking on the occasion Nasir Javed, a sector specialist, said that approximately one child dies every 10 minutes due to poor sanitation. The cost of poor sanitation is a loss of 3.96 per cent of Pakistan’s GDB, which is approximately $5.7 billion. Sana Rusool, Director of Environment, Ministry of Climate Change said that more than 15 million people still practice open defecation in Pakistan, which is a public health crisis.

She further added that this issue had gained much-needed impetus in recent months due to the unprecedented and devastating floods of 2022, which is why this workshop was a very crucial step in bringing together all key stakeholders to discuss and deliberate upon urban sanitation, its challenges, and opportunities.

Inoussa Kabore, deputy Representative of UNICEF Pakistan, highlighted that urban sanitation is at the center of UNICEF’s WASH programming in its next country program. “As part of the overall UN cooperation framework with the government of Pakistan, UNICEF leads the social services pillar and access to sanitation is one of the priorities. I, therefore, want to reiterate our commitment and support to the government as it seeks to accelerate the provision of safely managed, equitable, and climate-resilient water, sanitation, and hygiene services targeting the vulnerable and marginalized, children and women” he said.

Hammad Hundal-OIC- IsDB Regional Hub Turkiye, said that the Islamic Development Bank was committed to supporting its member countries to achieve their national SDG targets. “IsBD has allocated $8 billion so far for the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene sector. We seek to expand our collaborations in Pakistan for boosting recovery, tackle poverty, building resilience, and drive green economic growth as per IsDB’s strategy. I foresee this workshop would be a stepping stone to discussing and planning actions for addressing urban sanitation challenges in Pakistan”.

Participants will discuss the key challenges facing urban sanitation systems in Pakistan and mutually share their viewpoints to formulate recommendations for addressing the challenges during four days long workshop. Based on these recommendations, action planning by each stakeholder is envisaged on the last day of the workshop, followed by a site visit to decentralised solid and liquid waste management facilities in Islamabad. Water and Sanitation Service providers from major cities of Pakistan, Provincial Planning & Development, Public Health Engineering, and Local Government Department’s representatives participated in the workshop.

Other participants include representatives from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, JICA, KOICA, AfD, UNHABITAT, Unilever, Private sector operators of FSM, NUST, UET Peshawar, WAP, AHKT, AHKF as well as representatives of Ministry of Climate Change, Pakistan Environment Protection Authority, and Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.