The residents of the garrison city have no option but to rely on water tankers which supply contaminated water due to a shortage in the city, a chronic problem faced by the people every summer.

The garrison city is divided into city and cantonment areas respectively managed by the Punjab and federal governments but their problems, particularly that of water shortage, have not been addressed by either of them.

At present, the daily requirement of the city is 71 million gallons of water (MGD) but the Water and Sanitation Agency is providing only 54 MGD, resulting in the shortage of 17MGD. The tube wells installed in the city also proved insufficient as the population ballooned in the garrison city over the past decades.

Due to the water shortage, the residents of the city have to rely on water tankers which often supply “contaminated water” in the absence of regulatory mechanisms. “There is a shortage of water in the area and the Wasa supplies water after three to four days,” said Muhammad Munir, a resident of Faisal Colony near the old airport.

“Some tube well operators are getting money from private water tankers and do not operate their tube wells citing technical faults which force people to buy untreated water from private water tankers,” said Hussain Khan, a resident of Shah Khalid Colony.

Faisal Rehman, a resident of Ch. Bostan Khan Road, said that the private tankers cash in on the situation and sell water at expensive prices to the residents. He complained that the elected lawmakers have time and again promised to resolve this issue but after every election, they turn a blind eye towards it.

“PTI parliamentarians from 2018 to 2022 failed to solve the water issue whereas, over the past three months, PML-N MNAs had not fared better either.” Another resident who lives near Dhoke Syedan said his family required a tanker after every third day straining his income amid inflation which had already taken a toll on the purchasing power of the working and middle classes.

Rizwan Shah, a resident of Lane 7 Peshawar Road, said there was a tube well in the area but the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board still failed to provide water, alleging “only selected areas” were being supplied with water. “We are getting water through private tankers at the rate of Rs4,000 but the quality of water is not good, he said, adding that they had to use water from filtration plants for drinking and cooking.

A senior official of district administration told Dawn that dams were needed to meet the city’s water requirements. He said that the groundwater level in the area was depleting at a rapid pace and the tube wells failed to prove effective over the past few years. Speaking about the Dadocha Dam project, he claimed that this dam would provide 35 million gallons of water to Rawalpindi residents.

Over the 10 years, the groundwater in some areas of Rawalpindi depleted “from 550 feet to 700 feet” due to an over-extraction, prompting Wasa to ask the government to ban the installation of new tube wells in the city areas. One of the reasons for the sharp depletion of groundwater is private housing societies, which rely on groundwater to meet their demand.

As per the relevant laws, the private housing societies were responsible for the supply of water in their respective areas as well as the discharge of sewerage. However, these housing schemes dump untreated waste in the Korang and Soan rivers, from where private tankers are allegedly supplying water to residents in Rawalpindi.

Besides housing societies, water tankers extract groundwater to sell it to residents through illegal hydrants, causing its depletion. This issue had also landed in the Lahore High Court which took notice of illegal water hydrants and formed a nine-member committee over the issue.

Talking to Dawn, WASA spokesman Umer Farooq said that the Wasa completed the survey of the area and found 70 illegal water hydrations in the city areas which it would regularise.

He said that the district administration formed a committee to fix the rates of the water tanker charges, adding that Wasa would act as a regulator in this regard. However, he said that water rates for the private tankers would be fixed soon.

PML-N MNA Malik Ibrar told Dawn that the PML-N governments in the centre and Punjab were working to resolve the issue. He said the Military Lands and Cantonments had assured they would take up the matter with the federal government on a priority basis. He said the Punjab government had also been requested to provide funds to the cantonment areas so the people would get clean drinking water without any problem.

Chaklala Cantonment Board (CCB) former vice president Raja Irfan Imtiaz told Dawn that the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board was providing 2MGD to CCB through the Khanpur Dam supply which was not sufficient. He said that more than half of the people in the Cantt areas were getting water from private tankers.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2024