Karachi, especially the Defence Housing Authority (DHA), has been a victim of the tanker mafia for ages now, and no government and even president of Pakistan could do anything about it despite having been elected to the National Assembly from the DHA constituency.
A lot of discussion has taken place on how one of the largest taxpayer clusters in Pakistan remains hostage to tanker mafia, but we all know that the provincial bureaucracy, the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB), the paramilitary forces, ministers and, of course, the tanker mafia find the business too lucrative to leave.
With Pakistan suffering from a severe foreign exchange crisis, I did some back-of-envelope calculations to look at the scale of foreign exchange wastage due to this inefficient water delivery mechanism. And the result is astounding.
Based on an average of 175,000 households in the DHA alone, it has a population of around one million if we keep the average family size of six. They would be needing three tankers per month, and the average two-way journey of each tanker per trip would be 50km. With tankers doing 4km per litre, and the diesel cost being $1.2 per litre, we waste approximately $133 million of foreign exchange every year on what surely is an accepted form of corruption with duly identified stakeholders.
To put things in perspective, this is 13pc of International Monetary Fund (IMF) tranche of $1bn we are so desperate about. Can the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the ministry of finance come up with a formula to install water metres across DHA, keep the same rate charged by the water tankers, i.e., Rs6,000 to Rs7,000 per 3,000 gallons, for this piped water, and devise a mechanism under which the proceeds from this arrangement get distributed among the existing mafias so that they may not stand deprived of their booty?
This can at least save the much needed foreign exchange we waste on diesel import. I am sure the DHA population will be happy to keep on paying this extortion if at least it saves them the hassle of arranging water tankers every week.
MUHAMMAD SAQIB
KARACHI
