World Water Day 2024: Call For Preservation Of Freshwater Aquifers, Glaciers

Unaware of the International Water Day celebrated with a theme ‘Water for Prosperity and Peace’ today, Shahjehan Khan, (58), a poor taxi-driver continued to bring three gallons of clean drinking water on Sehri and Iftar for his family after the freshwater aquifers of his village became contaminated following the 2022 devastated floods, which inundated his entire village in Nowshera district

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Mar, 2024) Unaware of the International Water Day celebrated with a theme ‘Water for Prosperity and Peace’ today, Shahjehan Khan, (58), a poor taxi-driver continued to bring three gallons of clean drinking water on Sehri and Iftar for his family after the freshwater aquifers of his village became contaminated following the 2022 devastated floods, which inundated his entire village in Nowshera district.

Known as Shah Gee by the local residents and relatives, the motivated driver frequented to Pabbi tehsil by covering five kilometer distance in Ramazan to fill three gallons of clean drinking water from Tehsil Muncipal Administration Office to meet his family Aftar and Sehri’s needs.

“The ground water of my village had become unfit for drinking after the 2022 flash floods in River Kabul, leaving him with no other option but to bring clean drinking water from TMA Office by spending my hard earned money on fuel,” he told APP while loading water gallons in his car.

“The water of my village is so unhealthy that a person could hardly drinking one glass during Sehri,” he said, adding the issue was raised with local politicians and elected lawmakers on several occasions but unresolved so far.

“Provision of clean drinking water is a basic right of people and responsibility of the Governments. I have only one demand of PTI led Govt to provide us clean drinking water,” he said.

Like Shah Gee, most of the residents of nearby villages including Bara Banda, Aman Kot, Mohib Banda, Chowki Darab and Dheri Mian Ishaq are seen bringing potable water from tehsil Pabbi, Nowshera and Peshawar.

The water situation would worsen in future especially in Nowshera, Peshawar and Charsadda districts due to persistent threats of floods in Rivers Kabul and Swat owing to climate change and global warming induced weather challenges.

Gulzar Rehman, former Conservator Forests KP said that climate change induced weather patterns including droughts, rains and desertification have started adverse impact on the groundwater aquifers in the region including Pakistan.

He said that about 97% of the planet’s liquid fresh water is stored in aquifers worldwide, adding the major aquifers that are tapped on every continent including Asia are providing drinking water to more than 1.5 billion people.

Despite of having Indus River being the lifeline of Pakistan and over 5,000 largest glaciers, water shortage is posing serious challenges to agriculture, livestock and fish farming. “Nearly 97% of water is used for agriculture, and the remaining 3% is utilized for domestic, industrial and other purposes and this insecurity keeps on lingering due to mismanagement of water.

The National Water Policy 2018 has revealed that the per capita surface water availability declined from 5,260 cubic meters per year in 1951 to around 1000 cubic meters in 2016 and this quantity is likely to further drop to about 860 cubic meters by 2025, marking our transition from a water stressed to a water scarce country.

As per the policy, the minimum water requirement to avoid food and healt implication of water scarcity is 1000 cubic meters per capita per year. This situation calls for rapid development and management of the country water resources on war footing basis.

He claimed that every year about seven million acre feet of water was lost to the sea due to lack of water reservoirs, adding the water table is under threat due to excessive use of clean drinking water by car washing centres and demanded of regulating such unchecked business inevitable to protect water aquifers for generation to come.

He claimed that China and India had built 22,000 and 4500 small, medium and big dams respectively but Pakistan has comparatively constructed very least number of dams despite having huge hydro water’s potential stretched from Himalaya mountains to Karakorum and Hinduskash regions.

Wapda authorities told APP here that 108MW Golen Gol Dam in Chitral completed and work on Mohmand Dam of 800MW with 1.293MAF water storage capacity expedited. On completion of Mohmand dam on River Swat, about 160,000 acres land and about 18,237 acres of new land with annual benefits of Rs2.23 billion would be achieved.

Likewise, 300 million gallons water per day will also be provided to Peshawar for drinking purpose with benefits of Rs957 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 channelled to a treatment plant near Choona in Abbottabad and the treated water would be distributed through an extensive network of pipelines.

The experts underlined the need for establishment of groundwater authorities at provincial level and regulating of the care washing stations to save the precious commodity for future generation.

APP/fam/1422