Water Supply and Sanitation in Pakistan - History and Recent Developments

History and Recent Developments

See also: Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilization

For the first decades of Pakistan's modern history, in the largest cities City Development Authorities and their Water and Sanitation Authorities (WASAs) were responsible for water supply and sanitation. In towns and villages water supply facilities were built and operated by the provincial governments through their Public Health Engineering Departments (PHEDs). This was initially done without much participation by local government and communities in decision-making. However, in 1992 the federal government launched a Social Action Plan, which emphasized user participation, hygiene promotion and the use low-cost technologies in water supply and sanitation. A shift of sector responsibility then took place under the 2001 Local Government Ordinance (LGO). Under the LGO, three tiers of local governments were created, namely

• 120 District,
• about 500 Tehsils, and
• about 5,000 local governments governed by Union Councils of Pakistan.

The responsibility for water supply and sanitation was nominally devolved to Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs), the second-lowest tier of local government in Pakistan. The PHED was supposed to be merged into the Provincial Local Government Department and its staff was supposed to be devolved at the TMA level. However, the decentralization has not been implemented in all provinces. In 2008, it was reported that PHEDs were still active in water supply development, operation and maintenance, particularly in areas where the schemes spread across more than one tehsil. In those cases, the PHEDs usually develop supply-driven schemes with little or no participation of TMAs. In addition, the devolution took place differently from one province top another. According to a 2003 document, the PHED remains fully functional in the Balochistan Province and in the Punjab Province, and local government powers were recentralized.