(Musa Kamal Yousafzai) Water scarcity is increasing day by day around the globe but the people of Khyber have been suffering from this for a long time and the government is not focusing on the issue.
Fatima, a twenty-six-year-old woman living with her three children in Saidu Khel – a small village surrounded by trees and mountains in Landi Kotal, Khyber – said the water is becoming scarce in their area and he demanded the resolution of Water scarcity. As the men are out of their homes all day to work, women and children walk many miles to collect water for consumption. In homes where women are healthy, they do this work themselves, but women who are sick or unable to carry weight force their children to do this work, in the same cycle they do not even go to school, and their education is affected. It happens.
“One of my children goes to school while two are not of age till now. A government water tank comes at 9 in the morning and 5 in the evening about two kilometers from my house. I fetch water from there. I don’t get more than 15 to 20 liters of water at a time from the government tank. Still, I have pain in my back after lifting weights. After the birth of the child, the doctor prohibited me from lifting weights for six months, but no one can do so. Do not bring water during the day, because without water the house cannot run, food will not be cooked, and clothes and dishes will not be washed. “Sometimes when my back pain worsens, I have no choice but to send my son off from school so that he can help me fetch water.”
According to the 1991 water-sharing agreement between the provinces, 8.78 million acre-feet of water from the Indus River was allocated to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Still, due to a lack of water delivery infrastructure, KP can use only 6 million acre-feet of water. This is the reason why people depend on tube wells and wells to get water.
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According to a 2019 study conducted jointly by the International Conservation Union of Nature and the Pakistan Council of Research on Water Resources, 41 percent of people in Khyber district get drinking water from tube wells, 26 percent from springs, 24 percent from government pipelines, 8 percent from ponds and one Percentage are obtained from hand pumps.
According to the report of the Director General of Crop Reporting Service of 2018-19, the total number of tube wells in Khyber district was 230, while their number has increased to 2257 by 2022. While three government water tanks provide water throughout the district. Currently, there are 264 wells and 416 hand pumps in the district. Khyber has three tehsils; Bara, Jamrud, and Landi Kotal. The population of the district is around 11.5 lakh, in which the number of males is 51.2% while the number of females is 48.8% of the total population.
Fatima further explains the problem of water shortage has been going on here for years, but earlier in the village there were wells in people’s houses and Jufi Sabilullah used to allow others to fill water. But now people do not allow water to be filled from their houses, because most of the wells have dried up or the water content in them is very low. The groundwater level is going down day by day. Two rivers pass through Khyber district, Bara and Chhora. On the north side, the Kabul River passes which separates Khyber from Kurram district. There is also Jabba Dam and Bara Dam are also under construction.
To deal with groundwater scarcity, the KP government has also in the past considered a Green Water Supply Scheme, whereby water from dams or rainwater can be made potable through treatment plants. In this regard, Public Health The Engineering Department, and Nespak had worked together and a feasibility report was submitted by the provincial authorities in 2012 which was approved in 2014 but there was no progress. The problem of the water crisis would have been solved. The same report also stated that water scarcity increases when groundwater is extracted.
Shabab Afridi from Saidukhel village said that poverty is high in this area and people are deprived of basic facilities, even for minor treatment they have to go to Peshawar. The biggest deprivation in this is water, which has made it impossible for the local people to live. Especially the difficulties of women and children have increased.
Dr. Asif Khan, PhD in climate change from Cambridge University, while talking to Lok Sajag, said, that due to climate change, the underground water table has gone down. Earlier, water was extracted by digging 50 feet of ground, now, digging 150 feet. Also, no watermark is found. Climatic changes are also due to urbanization. Not only in KP but also in other provinces residential projects are being built on agricultural lands.
When land is used for agriculture, it also absorbs rainwater. But when a house is built on land, the water does not reach the underground recharge zone, so the water table goes down there. Due to climate change, the schedule of rains has completely changed. Previously, if there were rains for seven days in winter, there were no floods, which kept recharging the underground water, but now rains cause floods and the water table recharges. Instead of being recharged, that water is lost in rivers and streams.
Haji Ilyas Shinwari is a social worker, he told Lok Sajag that the level of underground water in Seido Khel has gone down a lot. Earlier, water was coming out from sixty to seventy feet, now even after digging up to a hundred feet, water does not come out. Even if the water comes out from somewhere, it disappears after a few days. Tired of this problem, in the recent elections, the residents of Saidukhel started a campaign of “Give Water, Vote Lo” but it always failed. Landi Kotal is the home constituency of Noorul Haq Qadri, the former federal minister for religious affairs, and in the recent elections, one of the National Assembly and three provincial assembly seats of Khyber district as well. Independent candidates were also successful.
