Building Gwadar without water?
One thing we know for sure is that if everything goes well with Gwadar, it is destined to become a massive urban center in a few years’ time – unstoppable and uncontrollable
Whenever anything good happens there, it makes us all happy. Be it the victory of political process over interest based deadlocks, or our real ‘angry brothers’ decide to look at us from dead-ends, or even that civ-mil drive on freshly rolled out asphalt carpets in rugged ranges of mountains, we are happy. Patriotism aside, Balochistan is a human question.
What we have chosen recently for addressing the issue is to followthe Chinese strategy i.e. to bring mega infrastructure projects to a troubled zone to boost trade and allied activities for local development and its contribution to the national economy. On both sides of the CPEC are those strife-ridden territories, resource rich provinces that needed more footprints of development from their governments – Xinjiang and Balochistan.The CPEC, its projects and the ensuing debate is very well known here. What requires much more attention is water woes of Gwadar City — around which the entire China-Pakistan cooperation is centered.
Gwadar, a small town of about a hundred thousand people, is witnessing the return of a water crisis that hit the city back in 2006 and then in 2011-12. The immediate cause is reported to be silting and drying up of the Ankara Kaur Dam – 17000 acre sole water storage and supply facility for the district. This shortage has pushed the people to either buy water from the tanker mafia at the rate as high as Rs15000-18000 per tanker or to boil sea water for consumption. And unfortunately, quality of water is no debate here when the provision seems to be a great blessing.
The issue is being raised at the provincial and national levels but corresponding delivery seems to be slow. There are long term project approvals likeRs4 billion for Shadi Kaur Dam, Rs2 billion for Sawar Dam, Rs0.49 billion for Sod Damand connecting Gwadar with Mirani Dam or Sundsar water supply, etc. Then there are short term relief activities by the provincial government like renting of the tankers from the informal market or bringing it in bulk from Karachi. All these endeavours, rightly placed, are directed to meet the shortage of water. But what we have learnt from our previous experiences with the same civil disaster in the city? The top most perhaps is that the calamity will hit us again if we don’t take measures that are truly futuristic and sustainable.
If we have a great vision for Gwadar, we will have to place water governance in the center of its planning. The goal should be 24/7 supply of consumable tap water for everyone in the city
One thing we know for sure is that if everything goes well with Gwadar, it is destined to become a massive urban center in a few years’ time – unstoppable and uncontrollable. We can draw a parallel between today’s Gwadar and the Chinese city Shenzhen of 1970s with a population of around thirty thousand. After change of its status to a Special Economic Zone in 1980s, Shenzhen is now a settlement of ten million people. While metamorphosis of both the cities appears to be the same, the state of water affairs should never be the same as Shenzhen, unfortunately, is among top ten water scarce cities in China.
If we have a great vision for Gwadar, we will have to place water governance in the center of its planning. The goal should be 24/7 supply of consumable tap water for everyone in the city. The people will never mind paying appropriate price for it provided the water utility wins their trust. Thus, we will have to build an organisation with strong values being seen in action and not just on the website. Such an organisation, with dedicated individuals, will then develop both the demand and supply side structures and schemes –dams, desalination plants, pipelines, water meters, tariff plans and recovery systems, innovative conservation policies, technologies and community mobilisation. The right time is now when we are drawing the outlines of this city.
Let’s not make Gwadar just a growth machine like Shenzhen or the Indian city of Gurgaon where obsession with economic growth has totally ignored the significance of municipal amenities developed by the community or a city council. We talk of making Gwadar a smart port city like Singapore or Dubai, we can also learn from the Singaporean water management or Phnom Penh (Cambodian Capital) water supply success story. The most important thing is the belief and will to transform the existing conditions. While with CPEC our dreams for infrastructure development enter a new level, we simply cannot afford to go up in a higher level of our historic apathy towards the bountiful and beautiful Balochistan. And we simply cannot build Gwadar without water.