A child drinks tap water. PHOTO: REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
Only 47 percent of Pakistanis have access to safe drinking water, experts warned at a seminar organized by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) in Islamabad, highlighting the country’s worsening water quality crisis and its serious implications for public health, productivity and sustainable development.
Speaking at the event titled ‘The Thirst for Security: Water Quality and Public Health in Pakistan’, Dr. Hifza Rasheed, Director General (Water Quality) of Pakistan Council of Water Resources Research (PCRWR), revealed that Pakistan’s per capita availability of fresh water has fallen from 5,260 cubic meters in 1951 to less than 1,000 cubic meters in 2024, placing it among the countries where water is scarce.
Dr Rasheed and Dr Shujaat Farooq, Deans (Research) of PIDE, highlighted that unsafe water contributes to almost 40% of diseases across the country and called for urgent, coordinated and climate-resilient reforms to safeguard Pakistan’s water future.
The session brought together experts, researchers and students to discuss the growing water quality crisis in the country and its implications for health, productivity and sustainable development.
Opening the seminar, Dr Farooq noted that despite Pakistan’s abundant natural resources, contamination, overexploitation and institutional fragmentation have made water insecurity one of the country’s most pressing public health challenges.
Citing UNICEF data, he said nearly 70 percent of households consume contaminated water and 30 to 40 percent of diseases, including diarrhea, hepatitis and typhoid, come from unsafe water. “The challenge,” he stressed, “is not only scarcity, but also weak coordination and management.”
Presenting a national overview, Dr Rasheed revealed that Pakistan’s per capita availability of fresh water has fallen from 5,260 m³ in 1951 to less than 1,000 m³ in 2024, placing the country in the water shortage category.
Agriculture uses about 93% of total fresh water, but irrigation efficiency remains below 40%. In Punjab alone, more than 1.3 million tube wells extract around 50 million acre-feet of groundwater every year, leading to severe depletion.
PCRWR data indicates that only 47% of Pakistan’s population currently has access to safe drinking water, a slight improvement from 39% in 2022, but still far from the SDG 6.1 target of universal access by 2030.
She warned that unsafe water causes an estimated 53,000 child deaths each year and contributes to the high rates of stunting that affect 44 percent of children nationwide. Industrial effluents, pesticides and untreated sewage are major pollutants, with arsenic contamination acute in southern Punjab and Sindh. Only 38% of wastewater is treated before discharge.
Highlighting climate risks, Dr Rasheed noted that Pakistan ranks fifth among the countries with the lowest water security in the world. The 2025 floods caused $14.9 billion in damage, worsening contamination and disease.
