Water Supply and Sanitation in Pakistan - Efficiency of Utilities

Efficiency of Utilities

There is little reliable quantitative information available concerning the performance of Pakistani water and sewer utilities, including on their efficiency. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) prepared a document, which includes data for the cities of Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore. Furthermore, data from six major cities were reported during a 2005 workshop in Karachi. Beginning in 2005, the first systematic performance benchmarking for water and sewer utilities in Pakistan was initiated by the World Bank's Water and sanitation program as part of a regional project that also covered India and Bangladesh. Eight utilities participated, including five WASAs in Punjab as well as the utilities of Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad. The benchmarking project found that data were not very reliable and that benchmarking was "largely externally driven than internally motivated" and that the organizational culture of utilities was "often slow to accept performance measurement, accountability to customers and to government, and improved service outcomes."

Two common indicators of the efficiency of utilities are non-revenue water and labor productivity.