Pakistan
Context
Pakistan is a geographically diverse country, bordered by Iran, Afghanistan, China, India and the Arabian Sea. It covers nearly 800,000km2, most of which is hot desert areas with little freshwater supply, though there are extensive flood plains and remote mountainous areas too.
Political disputes and lack of investment have left Pakistan underdeveloped and reliant on international creditors.
20 million people were affected by extreme floods in August 2010, more than a tenth of the population.
It is estimated that by 2015, over half of the population of Pakistan will live in urban areas, putting extreme strain on water provisions.
Sanitation coverage in Pakistan is only 58% and around 40% of the population don't have access to safe water.
Unsafe water and poor sanitation cause diseases which cost the Pakistani economy 112 billion Rupees (approx £8 billion) per year in health expenses and lost earnings.
What has WaterAid achieved?
- WaterAid has provided life-saving support to more than 130,000 people affected by the 2010 flooding and has provided displaced families with clean water, sanitation and hygiene services.
- WaterAid has played a key role in delivering the National Sanitation Plan and the Pakistan Sanitation Action Plan.
- WaterAid has lobbied the Government for mainline sewage connections in urban slums, improving sanitation for hundreds of people.
WaterAid's programme work in Pakistan
WaterAid has been working in Pakistan for nearly two decades. Initially, focus was on water and sanitation projects in remote rural areas, but WaterAid now also works in the sprawling slums surrounding Pakistan's urban centres to provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene education.
Pakistan country stragety 2010-2015
WaterAid has set up a rainwater collection project in the Thar Desert, influenced government in Gujranwala leading to the provision of clean water for 2,500 people and initiated extensive work to include hygiene education in schools.
Our response to the Pakistan floods This short film, made by WaterAid partner Indus Resource Center, is about hygiene intervention in displaced persons camps in response to the floods in Pakistan.
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Price points
- 56p could pay for a reinforced concrete sewage pipe
- £18 could pay to organise a hygiene video show for 50 people
- £70 could pay to develop a roof-water harvesting system in Pakistan, providing drinking water for seven people for four months
- £218 could pay to improve a shallow well, including construction of a base and installation of a rope pulley
Case study
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Credit: WaterAid /
Stephanie Rodrigues |
Amna Bibi from the Tharparkar District explains how brackish (saline contaminated) water has affected her community:
Drinking this saline and muddy water makes our children get sick all the time. It causes various stomach diseases such as diarrhea and excessive vomiting that lead us to spend more money on our children's health than on their education.
WaterAid's partner has started a rainwater harvesting project and implementation of storage systems to prevent Amna and her community having to spend up to eight hours a day collecting brackish water.
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Pakistan Sources:
World Bank (2011) World Development Indicators database - databank.worldbank.org, WHO / UNICEF (2010) Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report 2010, UNDP (2011), Human Development Report 2011 NB. Official statistics tend to understate the extent of water and sanitation problems, sometimes by a large factor. There are not sufficient resources available for accurate monitoring of either population or coverage. Varying definitions of water and sanitation coverage are used and national figures mask large regional differences in coverage.
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What we do
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