World Water Day today: Clean drinking water still a distant dream

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

By Amar Guriro

KARACHI: When nations around the world would be celebrating the World Water Day 2010 under the theme ‘Clean Water for a Healthy World’, the residents of the country’s biggest city and industrial hub, Karachi would be consuming highly polluted potable water.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) announced to observe World Water Day every year on March 22 to highlight the importance of clean water in 1992 in a conference at Rio de Janeiro.

While, most countries have organised different events to highlight the importance of the day, one such event titled “The Longest Toilet Queue” has also been organised where thousands would participate worldwide from March 20 to 22, as an attempt for setting a Guinness World Record regarding global sanitation awareness. The majority of the citizens living in the slum settlements of the city would practically be standing in queues on the streets as they have no proper sanitation facilities.

Despite tall claims by the government at various levels, the government authorities would celebrate the day with traditional criminal silence towards all water related issues. When it comes to clean potable water, Karachi is an example of sheer negligence, where the only source of drinking water to the city; the Keenjhar Lake is being polluted with sewerage and industrial waste. The lake a Ramsar site, rich wetland, protected game sanctuary and the biggest source of potable water to millions of residents of Karachi and Thatta districts, is being polluted with toxic effluent from industries, littering by tourists and washing of vehicles.

The lake is being polluted from toxic effluent from the industries of Kotri and Nooriabad and despite repeated requests by nature conservationists and environmentalists’, the government so far has done nothing to protect this lake.

Moreover, being the signatory of the 1971 convention held in the Iranian city of Ramsar, the Pakistan government is bound to protect Keenjhar Lake from pollution, but neither the government is bothering, nor the officials of the Ramsar convention have so far taken notice of this fast dying wetland.