Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal Wednesday said that the government has to raise water tariffs to preserve it for future generations.
“We treat water as a commodity item and the tariffs are also very low and the institutions responsible to deal with water are almost without a budget so they cannot be blamed for mismanagement of water issues,” the minister said while addressing the closing ceremony of the three-day International conference on “The Role of Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem (WEFE) Nexus for a Climate Resilient Pakistan.”
The conference was organized by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in collaboration with ministries of planning and development, and water resources.
The minister said that water preservation also requires behavioural changes among the masses which could only be possible by increasing awareness among them.
He said the institutions were almost without budgets and there were no revenues so “unless they are given adequate budgets, they cannot perform their job well and again this has become a political battle that how much water tariffs can politician afford in their society.”
The minister added that, “Water has to be valued. Unfortunately, our pattern of behaviour still shows that there is an abundance of water; however, water is becoming quite a scarce commodity. We are already water-stressed and may become water scarce country in near future.”
Pakistan, he said, had two drivers that were driving the demand for water and creating increased competition between different uses of water, first was the fast population growth and the second was the increasing urbanization.
These are creating increased demands for water. Therefore, it is important that we use water in a responsible manner so that we can cater to the needs of the different sectors including agriculture, clean drinking water, industry or other irrigation purposes, Ahsan Iqbal added.
Keeping in view, the importance of water, he said the PML-N government devised a water policy in 2018 that was not implemented by the subsequent government of PTI.
“Under the policy, we did start work on Diamer and Mohmand dams during our last tenure but unfortunately beyond 2018, there was no follow-up of the policy,” he said, adding that even no action was taken by the PTI government on the flood protection programme finalized in 2018.
He said during the four years from 2018 to 2022, the country had a period where there was no plan and no policy at work. Now, he said, the coalition government was trying to do some damage control and have some stabilizing strategy for the next couple of years to get stable by 2025.
“We have already directed the Planning Ministry to come out with policy briefs in different sectors for Pakistan’s vision 2035,” he added.
