Wadood Jan
PESHAWAR: “There was a hell of thirst, there was water in sight.” Khalid Karar has beautifully made ‘thirst’ the subject of his ghazal (poem). Although it can be interpreted in many ways but can be explained in a cautious way by saying that when a person is thirsty, he sees and finds water in everything, since thirst is a matter of life and death.
A man trapped in hell of thirst does not see whether the water is clean or dirty. He just tries to save his life but often he puts his life at stake in an attempt to save his life because drinking contaminated water has to embrace diseases. If a person has to die of thirst, then diseases afflict and kill him.
But water is not just a matter of life and death, but more than that, sometimes water becomes a matter of ‘honor and dignity. Sixteen-year-old Sharifa of Gramat, a town in Drabin Tehsil, Dera Ismail Khan was dishonored by a few men when she was out from the home to fetch some rainwater.
According to the World Health Organization, 2.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean and safe water owing to the death of more than 297,000 children under the age of five each year due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene, or unsafe drinking water.
According to another unconfirmed report, 200 children die every hour in the world due to poor drinking water. Similarly, 80% of diseases in developing countries are water-related.
A report from the Internet claims that if clean water were delivered to all human beings, 2 million lives could be saved each year, and if all areas were provided with clean water, the child mortality rate will be reduced by 50%.
Another report also revealed that 1.8 billion people in the world drink contaminated water.
Clean drinking water is a basic human right. United Nations Development Goals (Sustainable Development Goals) says that according to the sixth goal safe, clean, and cheap water should be available to every person by 2030.
However, the quality of drinking water in Pakistan is being neglected in the face of the threat of severe water shortage by 2025.
According to a report, 21 million people across Pakistan do not have access to safe drinking water.
Another report found that Pakistan was ninth in the list of the ten countries most deprived of access to drinking water.
There are a host of problems in the homeland, including a weak economy and a lack of obvious planning and principles, and that is why, like other issues, the water crisis in Pakistan has intensified.
Although the government is not completely indifferent to solving the water problem due to the weak economy of the country, it can’t stand alone to resolve the issue of clean drinking water that is why a few NGOs including the Alkhidmat Foundation is at the forefront of helping the government and alleviating people’s water problems.
The Alkhidmat Foundation seeks to address the water problem so that people have access to clean drinking water. To this end, Alkhidmat’s “Clean Water” Department has completed thousands of projects, with many projects under construction and in operation.
The “Clean Water” Department has set up several water filtration plants and many more projects are underway. The AKF has been installing and building submersible pumps, hand pumps, solar submersible pumps and wells.
AlKhidmat Foundation Pakistan has so far completed a total of 10966 clean water projects across the country.
AlKhidmat Foundation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has completed a total of 5,300 water projects since its inception (2010 -2020). These completed projects include 3921 hand pumps, 44 gravity flows, 608 wells, 155 small hand pumps, 344 water small plants, 5 water filtration plants, 210 submersible pumps, 6 solar submersible plants, and 10 other projects.
In the year 2020, AlKhidmat Foundation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa completed a total of 562 water projects including the installation of 464 community water hand pumps, 50 solar submersible pumps, 52 solar submersible pumps, 43 wells, and 3 water filtration plants. On daily basis, more than 86,000 people are benefited from these water projects of AKF.
