H2O----High-time 2 Observe
By Rabia Tirmazi
Recently Finance Ministry of Pakistan has issued economic survey of 2009-10 that put blames of majority problems on water crisis in Pakistan. Almost every sector depends on water resources either its power generation, or agriculture. Economists had for seen that water crisis will get worsen in next 25 to 30 years. But government have turned blind eye by not giving importance to this large-scale issue. Although the GDP has increased to 4.1% in year 2009-10 compared to last year’s GDP of 1.2% but main sectors like livestock, agriculture has recorded drastic decline over the years due to serious water crisis. Pakistan is a rich country in natural resources and agriculture was considered to be the backbone of our economy. During 1980’s the contribution of agriculture sector was around 60% of GDP growth rate but this figure has declined to just 29%. This sector is continuing a secular trend of decline over the past several years mainly due to the persistent negligence of government towards this sector.
Total population of Pakistan has increased to 173.51 million and according to a study the country has slipped below 100m3 of water per capita from year 2010. Water unavailability is however another major obstacle to the development of the country in terms of the food security, economic development and industrialization. The water shortage in agriculture sector alone has been estimated 29% for 2010 and 33% for 2025.
Despite all these issues, the current scenario have almost twisted now we have abundant of water in form of floods and heavy rainfalls but we lack water reservoirs and dams. Present dams and reservoirs are full to their capacity and are not enough to control floods. There was no pre-planning for water management our government was just stressing on problems not on solutions or infrastructure development. At the time of water crisis the major solution was to build water dams that could not only solve the problem of water shortage but could help in electricity generation as well. But this problem prolonged due to inter-provinces conflicts. Pakistani economy had to bear huge losses in form of providing the public with alternatives to solution, not the solution.
We have not just forgot the Swat operation in which millions of funds were being allocated for rehabilitation, shelter, maintenance and food purposes and all this happened due to poor security issue in Pakistan. Now once again we are on the same turn that huge funds will be allocated to rehabilitation of flood victims, infrastructure development, and concerning health issues. I am unable to understand where are the government five year plans for economic development? when millions and billions from budget have to be used for rehabilitation or support purposes. Water is neither the main issue nor the flood because it’s a natural disaster; actually it is high-time to observe where we are standing. This is our elected government which is not even eligible to be on their seats anymore. Since the time this government has been elected it has not solved a single issue either its security or energy crisis. Now more than 100,000 households need aid who have lost everything in floods. All this happened due to poor disaster management and poor infrastructure development. This is high time to think over that it’s again a huge loss to our economy in the form of loss of valuable lives, severe damage to crops, agriculture, livestock sector, and destroyed infrastructure of roads and communication.
Our economy is desperately drowning due to the government’s poor management, ineffective policies and under-investment in critical sectors. These matters can not be deferred for much longer and will require enormous resources.
