THARPARKAR - As is true of all humans, water is life for 1.6 million inhabitants of Thar braving frequent droughts since centuries. It did not rain there in the last over five years, but they are no longer dependent solely on rain. The solar-powered reverse osmosis water plants, also called RO plants, have kindled a ray of hope in the water-starved people of Tharparkar.
The Sindh government, in collaboration with Pak Oasis, a water engineering company, has installed 220 RO plants to provide clean drinking water to over 300,000 households and seven million livestock in the area.
A select group of visiting journalists from Lahore was taken to a water plant installed at Mithi, the district headquarters of Tharparkar. Operating at zero electricity cost, it pumps out two million gallons per day. The plant and its slanting roof covered with solar panels are visible from many kilometres on Naukot-Mithhi road.
Previously, water was pumped out once a month from the canal at Naukot to Mithi.
“This plant is meeting the requirements of Mithi and 100 other villages in both directions by the already laid pipeline from Mithi to Naukot and Mithi to Islamkot. It is producing the required two million gallons per day while running for only four to five hours a day,” Pak Oasis Director Marketing Kazim Burney told the journalists at the plant site, adding it was the largest solar-powered water plant in Asia.
Another 1.5 million gallons per day capacity plant is under construction at Islamkot.
In addition to these, 80 solar RO plants of 10,000 gallons per day capacity each have been built and commissioned on September 30, 2014, from where people are fetching excellent quality drinking water.
Burney further said 225 solar-operated plants with 10,000 gallons per day capacity were under construction, which would be operational by March 2015. In the next phase, another 525 solar RO plants would become operational by October 2015, bringing the total to 750 solar RO plants, he added.
“We are utilising the inexhaustible 1.5 billion acres feet underground water and the sun. While the media can continue its old rhetoric, the already commissioned RO plants have revolutionised life in Thar,” relief operation in-charge, Senator Taj Haider, told journalists. He hoped that with the completion of the two phases of solar RO plants in October 2015, Thar would, by far, be the highest-rated district in Pakistan as far as quality of clean drinking water and its availability is concerned.
Interestingly, the ratio of Hindu-Muslim population in Thar district is almost 50-50. At the time of the partition, however, it was a Hindu-dominated area with only 20 percent of Muslim population. “The Muslim population increased manifold over the time since our Muslim brethren don’t believe in population planning,” Mokaish, a Hindi professor of chemistry at a local college in Mithi, commented laughingly upon gradual rise of the Muslim population there.
Extensive interaction with Muslims and Hindus revealed that the two communities had been living there peacefully since centuries. It was learnt that Muslims had banned slaughter of cows in the area voluntarily as token of respect for the feelings of Hindus who consider this animal as very sacred. Astonishingly enough, the crime rate in the area is zero percent despite widespread poverty. The people here have proven it wrong that poverty breeds crime. Thar region forms part of a big desert, spreading over a vast area of Pakistan and India, from Cholistan to Nagar Parkar in Pakistan and from the south of Haryana down to Rajisthan in India.
The district which is home to precious granite rocks, China clay and coal mines is deprived of health and education facilities. The sanitation conditions at Mithi are also deplorable. “We are facing acute shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers here as no one is willing to be posted in this remote district,” Senator Taj Haider told the journalists when asked about the poor state of affairs in this part of Sindh. He belied the impression that children here were dying of malnutrition. “There is always a possibility as anywhere else in Pakistan that some parents depending on local remedies do not bring their children to hospital. The total number of reported deaths of children in our hospital records for the period ending on December 1 is 310. This is much below the national average,” he observed.
Taj Haider said 253,000 households were being supplied free wheat since March this year. “The 1,100 kilometres of link roads built in Thar during the five years of our last tenure and the much-improved health facilities have put a basic health unit or a hospital within the reach of 90 percent of the people of Thar,” he added.
Giving a positive spin to the whole situation in Thar, Taj further remarked: “Women now don’t have to walk miles to fetch water daily; instead they can get water according to their needs as and when they want without any fear or worry. Absence from schools has also decreased as children do not fall ill by consuming contaminated water.” He also believed that provision of high quality of safe and clean drinking water had been instrumental in eliminating water-borne diseases which accounted for nearly 60 percent child deaths in Pakistan. “Local people save money as now they don’t have to spend a fortune to take their family for treatment to big cities because the diseases caused by contaminated water have declined. The health of expectant mothers has improved in the area and infant mortality rate has also dropped significantly,” he concluded.