Tankers can’t reach into the narrow alleyways deep in Karachi’s slums. So residents order water by donkey cart or motorcycle, or they pay to fill up their plastic drums at “water stations” — large drums of water set up alongside little grocery stores.

The situation wasn’t always like this. Years ago, they used to be running water but the mafia began siphoning off water from government pipes running through private land, drying up the supply.
The reason for water tapping is obvious – it’s a lucrative business. The mafia sells it at different prices based on the water quality. The government’s water is considered the cleanest, so it fetches the highest price, about $150 for a month’s supply.

Most can’t afford that, so many buy cheaper brackish water from a different supplier. A group of men specialise in selling polluted water to Karachi’s poorest residents. This water often comes from wells dug near a dam on the outskirts of Karachi. The cost is $20 a month but if not boiled immediately, the water begins to stink.
The business largely exists because Karachi’s water supply barely covers half of the city’s needs and according to the chief engineer of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, the city needs 1200 million gallons per day but receives 450 million gallons a day from the Indus River and a nearby dam. An estimated third of the municipal water supply is lost or siphoned off.

The situation in Karachi reflects a broader water crisis across Pakistan. Inefficient agriculture, dwindling aquifers, an increasingly dry environment, rapid demographic growth and heavy pollution are diminishing both the quantity and quality of water for residents which means that Karachi’s water problems, and its attendant crime of water theft, may become a problem in other parts of Pakistan.

The water tanker drivers routinely pay off officials from Karachi’s water board, the police and the “landlords” — men who own the land where the government pipes are punctured, and who build valves to allow the drivers to pump the water. Those valves, used to steal government water, are called “illegal hydrants.”

Officials at the water board say tanker mafia drivers could fill up from legitimate government water sources, but on one condition: they would have to distribute about half the water at cheaper, government rates to residents in designated areas where there are no pipes, or where the water infrastructure has collapsed. They are free to sell the rest at commercial rates to whomever they wanted. Basically, the tanker drivers now sell nearly half of the city’s supply of water.
Despite those reforms, Karachi’s water problem isn’t solved because the water tanker drivers can sell about half of the government water at commercial rates, it’s still unaffordable for many of Karachi’s residents.

The taps that run into the slums are still dry as a result of ongoing drought and infrastructure damage, so poor residents must buy water from the local water stations that dot the slum, hoping that boiling would kill whatever made the water smelly.

Many children constantly suffer with diarrhoea, one of the leading causes of child mortality in Pakistan. Medical care is unaffordable especially when water is a more than a basic need. It’s a vicious cycle that will only be broken once there is piped water and an end is put to corruption.

ANNISA ESSACK