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Akistan is a land that is carved by rivers, yet it is facing severe drinking water shortages today. The water that once maintained civilizations along with Sindh now tells the story of neglect, corruption and treachery.
The flood river is not a novel challenge. For more than five thousand years, the rivers of Sindh Basin took flowers and decreased. Equipped in the era of satellite imagery and scientific progress, the state should not be so helpless.
The Federal Flood Commission and the irrigation departments, which entrust the responsibility of protection, have failed year -on -year. When the rise houses fall, the fields are lost and the lives are lost, not always because the challenge is unprecedented, but due to poor governance. Flood losses are not just natural disasters. They also reflect our institutional failures.
Look at the Rawal Dam. The lake, which once provided drinking water to Rawalpindi City and the cantonment, has been brought to a memorable catastrophe.
During the British rule, the forests that form the lake water were protected. Authorities realized that clean water starts with healthy forests. The Northern Command Headquarters, which was kept in the GHQ today in Rawalpindi, was reserved with alert. The umbrella of the forest saved the soil and maintained the flow.
Today, greed has been replaced by patronage. Benigala, once the green jungle, has turned into a villam of Villas for the elite. Politicians, bureaucrats and influential elites have built houses on the edge of Rawal Lake, which are happy with its shining surface and are quietly implementing their wheat in it.
Cancer has spread further. Barakao and Bari Imam’s Kachi populations have not been treated in the lake without control. Citizens officials have taken an oath to protect it, instead of taking advantage of its neglect. The above, where the Korang River is to feed the Korang Rawal Lake, a local politician has built a thirteen -storey hotel.
In 2000, Supreme Court Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid ordered his demolition. The politician responded, allowing the construction of hundreds of buildings around it so that the green slopes of Marri became a solid greedy sky line.
On June 12, 2003, a Tehsil Nab Nazim wrote a letter to the Punjab government, requesting intervention and warned that the water shed was being destroyed. His warning had no effect. Illegal hotels are still standing, their shadows are moving towards Rawal Lake, where water is deep, thick and more polluted every year.
From time to time, the high resolution satellite imagery tells the truth. It shows the forest cover, shown in the brown color of the unplanned construction, the green harvesting of the green. These images are recorded with a cold description that is contaminated by recognizing the story of a water shed, which is falling under the weight of human greed.
If Rawal Lake, which is sitting exactly the heart of power and providing drinking water to the Garrison City, cannot be saved, what can be the expectation of the remote corners of Pakistan? If a stone stone is released from the house of Parliament to throw a stone, how can the villages of Sindh, the Balochistan desert, or the Punjab fields expect to be better protected? If the patrons of the nation cannot protect the water in the backyard of their home, what will they ever take care of in Gwadar?
The Federal Flood Commission and the irrigation departments, which entrust the responsibility of protection, fail year -on -year. When the water grows, the houses fall, the fields are gone and the lives are lost.
Science has been whisper for a long time, but Pakistan has not heard. Watershed forests have an important role in providing high quality drinking water. Safe forests reduce sesame seeds, filter pollution and regulate river flow. Where the forests stand, the rivers are clean. Where the forests fall, the rivers turn to poison. Keeping control keeps the soil in place. Natural filtration absorbs garbage from agriculture. Montein cloud forests, in particular, maintain water production and maintain dry weather flow. The cut of every tree is a death sentence for the river. Every illegal hotel wound a river.
Some other countries have chosen different ways. In Kenya, Nairobi protects its water supply by preserving the National Park, ensuring that the city’s water supply is clean and stable. In South Africa, the Cape Town Peninsula and Hotantts defend their future by protecting the Netherlands Catchment, acknowledging that the filtration plant cannot cope with jungle work. In India, the Mumbai Sanjay Gandhi relys on the lakes inside the National Park, where the green slopes clean the water and protect the people. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Rawal Dam, once the promise storage, has dropped to a basin of pollution. It provides Rawalpindi to 28 million gallons daily, but the city needs sixty. The Water and Sanitation Agency provides five million gallons from joint sources, leading to six lacking. Supply reaches the Akyat Union Councils, but the flow is often wrong and contaminated.
A city in which the Army Headquarters drinks alcohol with poisonous tactics. What does it say is that for the flow of villages, where women go away to bring mud water?
This is worse than what is commonly called governance failure. This is treachery: to abandon people and the earth alike. Where once the forests were keeping an eye on the rivers, concrete monsters reduced them today. Where the laws once offered protection, they have made fun of them today. Where the rivers once maintained life, today they bring death, flood villages in time and run dry on others.
This tragedy is not needed. The poorest countries from Pakistan have shown that the safety of forests, enforcement of rules and respecting the environmental system costs less than filtration plants. But Pakistan has chosen blindness, intoxicated with profits and privileges. Gwadar thirsty children screams, Sindh’s submerged fields, Rawalpindi pipes are not different stories. They are the verses of the same derge. Due to each tree in the water season, another line has been added to the mournful poem.
Unless we pay attention to the lessons of the Rawal Dam, the rivers that give birth to our civilization will eliminate it. No amount of borrowing money can control corruption. Pakistan needs honest bureaucrats, capable engineers and skilled water managers – those who acknowledge that water is not a sale item, but a lifeline that is protected.
Author and Advocate Supreme Court, Dr. Ikramol Haq, is an affiliated teacher in the Lahore University of Management Sciences.
Engineer Irshad H. Abbasi is the co -founder of Energy Excellence centers in Nost and UET, Peshawar.
