Water and sanitation

Urban policymakers are facing so many challenges of which the biggest one is draft a policy for dealing with water and sanitation in cities. In most Pakistani cities, water is supplied for only four to 16 hours per day and to only 50 percent of the population. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), 90 percent of water supply schemes are unsafe for drinking.

Shared latrines among households are common in cities and access to solid waste management services remains low. In the most population-dense areas of Karachi, one toilet is shared among twenty people. The World Bank estimates that poor sanitation costs Pakistan around 3.9 percent of GDP, diarrhoea-related death and disease among children under five being the largest contributors. It is time the higher authorities took remedial steps to resolve this problem.

Usama Khan

Karachi