Pakistan: Locals warn of protests over water shortage in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Mansehra (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) [Pakistan], June 7 : The residents of Mansehra city in Pakistan accused the Tehsil Municipal Administration of failing to ensure smooth water supply and warned the administration to stage street protests if their demands for proper water supply are not met within a week.
The locals criticized the administration saying that "despite spending huge sums of money on a shallow groundwater scheme, the Tehsil Municipal Administration failed to ensure a smooth water supply."
They further said that the work on the water scheme had been completed but even then the water supply has not been ensured further demanding the administration for the same within a week otherwise people would take it to the streets of the city.
A local group representative said, "The water table had dropped significantly, while many wells and hand pumps had dried up. The crisis had been growing amid sweltering weather to the misery of the local population," the Dawn newspaper reported.
Another resident said, "Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently visited Mansehra and announced Rs1 billion funds for the resolution of water shortages on an emergency basis, but that announcement awaited action."
"The sinking of a hand pump for water cost around Rs 200,000 but the option was unaffordable for most of the inflation-hit people. If the TMA didn't begin water supply from the shallow well installed on the Bothkhata stream within a week, the people would take to the streets," warned another resident, the Dawn reported.
Meanwhile, as Pakistan continues to suffer the water crisis, the searing heatwaves have added to the woes of the country's situation.
According to the climate minister, Pakistan had faced the warmest months on record since 1961, with temperatures ranging from 3 to 6 degrees centigrade warmer than normal.
Pakistan had a harsh and lengthy heatwave, the longest one in the country's history.
The water crisis has broken a 22-year record in Pakistan as the provinces face a 50 per cent shortage of water and there is 97 per cent water scarcity in reservoirs, as per the details released by the Indus River System Authority (IRSA).
A total of 56 per cent less water is coming to the rivers due to extremely low temperatures in the northern part of the country, the IRSA said while describing the current water situation as worrisome.
Water shortage is also leading to many health issues including water-borne disease, heatstroke, and kidney issues among the residents of the country.
According to a report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), an estimated 70 per cent of households in Pakistan drink bacterially contaminated water. The current heatwave has worsened the situation.
A worse outbreak of cholera in southwest Balochistan province left several kids killed and thousands of others infected, and stomach diseases in Punjab and Sindh occurred due to drinking contaminated water.
Earlier, a report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said that an unprecedented suite of climatic changes has caused crop yield decline and production losses in the region.
The decline in rice and wheat yields has been observed in Pakistan with climate change through the use of heat-tolerant varieties has provided some resilience and forestalled greater impacts, the report said.
Climate change presents immediate and long-term challenges for South Asia such as glacier melt, sea-level rise, groundwater depletion, extreme weather events, and frequency of natural hazards that are likely to worsen in coming decades, the report further said.