Some 80,000 people in Badin now receive 200,000 litres of safe, drinking water every day.

November 2011: Jaan Mohamma, 11, had to walk many kilometres from his home to fetch water from wells after floods in August and September contaminated the water supply in his village in Badin, a district in southern Pakistan’s disaster-prone Sindh province.

“It was too salty for me to drink. For some people who drank it, they caught diarrhoea,” says Jaan as he fills up his jerry can with clean, drinkable water from a blue tank provided by Plan Pakistan and local partner HANDS.

“Now I am happy that the water source is so close to home,” says Jaan, who now doesn’t have to sacrifice his school time for water fetching.

Deep impact

Heavy rains and floods in late August and early-September have killed some 200 people and made 6.8 million homeless or displaced across Pakistan. Out of those affected people, 1.8 million of them live in Badin, the worst-hit region. 

Jaan is among the 80,000 people Plan and HANDS are providing 200,000 litres of safe drinking water to daily as the availability of safe drinking water has been a major challenge in Badin. Only 20 out of 78 water sources remain usable after the heavy rainfall. The situation has somewhat improved as the local government has fixed its water filtration plants and some INGOs have installed new ones. 

Plan, HANDS and UNICEF have teamed up to ensure clean water is trucked in daily to fill water tanks in remote villages for people to have clean, drinkable water. There is a phone number and a message in local Sindhi language on each water tank for the villagers to call for advice.

All hands on deck

With Plan’s support, HANDS has put up Sindhi slogans of health awareness in villages and on radio to educate people on how to keep themselves and their neighbourhood clean.

“Thanks to clean water from Plan, UNICEF and HANDS, many of us no longer have sore throats or upset stomachs from bad water,” says village chief Mohammad Ali.

Opportunities for sanitation interventions are limited in areas that are still inundated and funding remains a major bottleneck for many agencies working to initiate and scale up the water, sanitation and hygiene response, the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned in its latest situation report 4 November.

“More funds are needed to support the large returnee population and prevent an outbreak of disease as most of the resources in the villages are damaged and not functional, therefore putting the population at risk. If additional funds are not available immediately, several Cluster members will run out of resources in a few weeks.”