At a recent briefing with the World Bank, Sindh’s Chief Minister laid bare a devastating truth: more than 90 per cent of rural households in his province rely on unsafe wells. That figure is staggering, but it mirrors what is happening across Pakistan. From Balochistan’s parched settlements to Punjab’s canal colonies, villages survive on water that carries disease more often than health.
The evidence has been with us for years. WHO and UNICEF surveys confirm that fewer than half of rural Pakistanis have access to safely managed drinking water. The result: diarrhoea, hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, all still entrenched in our epidemiological map. Diarrhoeal infections remain among the leading killers of children under five. Malnutrition and stunting, which rob nearly 40 per cent of Pakistani children of their futures, are fuelled by the same contaminated supply.
Its economic cost is equally unforgiving. The World Bank estimates that Pakistan loses nearly 3.9 per cent of GDP annually to waterborne diseases, malnutrition, and lost productivity. In other words, billions are flushed away each year simply because the state cannot guarantee safe drinking water.
Sindh has promised a remedy: the STAR WASH project, a $500 million collaboration with the World Bank to achieve universal access by 2033. It is ambitious, and if it endures, it could save lives. But Pakistan’s past offers a bleak warning. Rural water schemes have collapsed not because pipelines were never laid, but because no one funded their upkeep. We cut ribbons and then abandon the system to rust. Unless STAR WASH breaks that cycle, it risks joining the graveyard of well-intentioned failures.
Elsewhere, the picture is no better. Punjab’s tubewells, increasingly solar-powered, are draining aquifers faster than nature can replenish them. Provincial surveys already mark “critical” districts where the water table is slipping out of reach. In Karachi, the water board concedes that more than half of the treated supply vanishes through leaks or theft. Downstream, the Indus delta has withered; salinity has swallowed farmland, pushing families off ancestral land.
Yes, there are scattered bright spots. Karachi’s separate $240 million WASH programme, Punjab’s recharge well pilots, and community-led filtration plants. But these remain exceptions. For every pipeline that flows, dozens lie dry; for every village with a pump, hundreds still drink from sewage-laced canals.
Clean water is not charity. It is the state’s most basic duty. If Pakistan can build nuclear weapons and motorways, surely it can deliver safe water to its citizens. *