LAHORE, Feb 15: Water contamination in the country is continuing unabated as the issue does not feature high on the agenda of the government which also lacks commitment to enforce laws it has enacted for protecting water for future generations.

This apathy on the part of the government, enforcement agencies and the industrial and agriculture sectors responsible for contamination is resulting in the death of at least 250,000 children every year while adults are facing severe health hazards.

This was revealed in a report launched by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan in collaboration with Actionaid Pakistan, Pani Pakistan, Sungi, Pakistan Environmental Lawyers Association, Shehri and Human Welfare and Nature Conservation Society at a press conference here on Thursday.

WWF-Pak Fresh Water and Toxics Programme director Hammad Naqi told the newsmen that all the data for the report “Pakistan’s waters at risk” had been collected from various official studies so that the authorities could not challenge its authenticity.

He said the report was part of an effort to launch an awareness campaign on water in Pakistan. In this connection, they would also place an appeal in print media requesting the president, prime minister and chief justice of Pakistan to take a note of the situation, he said.

If the authorities concerned remained unmoved, he said, they would also move the relevant courts as a third step of the campaign to highlight gravity of the situation.

WWF-Pak director-general Ali Hasan Habibi, Pani Pakistan’s Dr Yasmeen Rashid and others were also present during the press conference.

Briefing newsmen, Mr Naqi said Rs114 billion were being incurred by the nation on water-related diseases, 60 per cent of the total ailments.

The report revealed that presence of arsenic in underground water was five times more than the WHO accepted limits and the result was eruption of cancer, and kidney and liver related diseases. He also highlighted the dumping of sewage in water channels through which toxic elements were entering into food chain.

The report said 99 per cent of the industrial effluent and 92 per cent of the urban wastewater were discharged untreated into rivers and Arabian Sea.

In 14 districts of Punjab, 85 per cent of water samples were found unfit for human consumption, forcing people to drink polluted water while no quality standards had been devised for drinking water.

The report lamented the unregulated groundwater abstraction trend as thousands of tube-wells were being dug every year for irrigation purposes while local as well as foreign companies were tapping underground water for marketing it in bottles depleting the precious resources.

The principal source of drinking water for a majority of people in Pakistan is groundwater. About 80 per cent of Punjab has fresh groundwater, but in Sindh, less than 30 per cent of groundwater is fresh. In NWFP, increasing abstraction has resulted in wells now reaching into saline layers, and much of Balochistan has saline groundwater.

The Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) had carried out a national water quality study in 2001. In the first phase of the programme, covering 21 cities, all samples from four cities and half the samples from 17 cities indicated bacteriological contamination.

In addition, arsenic above the WHO limit of 10ppb was found in some samples collected from eight cities. The same study also indicated how the uncontrolled discharge of industrial effluent affected surface and groundwater, identifying the presence of lead, chromium and cyanide in groundwater samples from industrial areas of Karachi, and finding the same metals in Malir and Lyari rivers flowing through Karachi and discharging into the sea.

A second PCRWR study was launched in 2004, and preliminary results indicated no appreciable improvement, while a separate study reported that in Sindh almost 95 per cent of shallow groundwater supplies were contaminated with bacteria.

There is very little separation of municipal wastewater from industrial effluent in Pakistan. Both flow directly into open drains, which then flow into nearby natural water bodies.

The report suggests that relevant policies like National Environment Policy, National Water Policy (draft), National Drinking Water Policy (draft) etc. that were in place, should be implemented in letter and spirit as there is no clear strategy devised so far to implement them.