Pakistanis waste billions of rupees worth of water every year. In fact, ever since I moved into my current home (where water is supplied through a meter), I didn't know how much water is wasted by those who live where water charges are fixed and very low. I have to pay, on average, Rs. 15,000 every month, but where there is no meter, the monthly charges are like Rs. 200 to 1,000 (water tax), depending on the covered area of the apartment or bungalow.
The water consumption per person is 40 to 50 gallons per day. This includes bathing, washing clothes, cleaning the house, etc. I have seen men in mosques wasting huge quantities of water because most of them come from villages where there is ample water in streams, rivulets and lakes. But if you tell them that transporting water from its source to the taps requires expensive electricity, you are likely to get lynched. Then there are those among the elite who think nothing of getting their cars washed daily. Service stations should be required to install water recycling or reverse osmosis plants to conserve water.
Where I live, water used to be provided by tankers. For a brief period of eighteen days, we got water from a desalination plant that conked out and was never repaired. Since it was installed by those who can't be named, no one dares to ask them why they bought junk machinery that would never work. In fact, they announced the expansion of the existing useless plant, but I and Ejaz Nabi (my St. Pat's class fellow, and retired Sindh police IG at the time), wrote to the newspapers about the failure of the project.
Tanker water was of course very expensive, so they built a reverse osmosis plant that makes a fantastic profit, as it charges more for its water than the tanker mafia did. But at least we have uninterrupted water supply throughout the year.
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