Nosy Mynah has been maintaining a particular ledger since 2004. It is not a large ledger, but it is patient. First entry: “Ghazi Barotha Water Supply: Rs17 billion, completion 2008.” Latest entry: “Rs170 billion, completion pending.”
Between these two lines lies an entire hydrological civilisation: eight announcements, multiple governments, 47 studies, a cost escalation that mastered the art of adding zeros, and not a single pipe laid. What did flourish was Islamabad’s most reliable public-private partnership, the private water tanker trade.
In 2004, water in Islamabad rested politely ten metres below ground. Today, it has descended to 120 metres, retreating roughly one metre every year, like a guest who was never invited but has finally taken the hint. The city demands 220 million gallons a day and receives about 70. The remaining 150 million gallons are supplied by optimism, improvisation, and tankers with excellent attendance records.
Ghazi Barotha Phase I was designed to deliver 100 million gallons daily, enough to close two-thirds of the gap. On paper, it has done so many times.
What arrived instead was the alternate economy. A private tanker now costs Rs 2,500 to Rs 5,000. Many households spend more on water in a week than the state charges in a month. Between fifty-nine and eighty-nine illegal hydrants operate in Rawalpindi alone, drilling six hundred feet into the earth. Residents call this the tanker mafia. Officials prefer the phrase “an unfortunate necessity,” usually after a pause.
The World Bank approved Rs500 million; the money went elsewhere. China expressed interest under CPEC; it did not materialise. ECNEC approved the project in 2018. Punjab dropped it in 2023. For nearly two decades, every government has agreed on one principle: someone else should pay.
The sister projects followed the template. Chirah Dam was announced in 2009. Costs rose. No land was purchased. Dotara, Shahdara, and Chiniot Dams reached the pre-feasibility stage, where consultants were paid, reports approved, and the dams forgotten.
Islamabad, by now, has perfected a four-step water policy: announce a dam, commission a study, pay a consultant, forget the dam.
In G-10 lives a woman who was forty two when Ghazi Barotha was first announced and is now sixty three. For twenty-one years, she has mastered the hydraulics of hope, waking before dawn, filling buckets during brief appearances of pressure, carrying them upstairs before the city changes its mind. Her routine has outlived eight governments and every version of the same solution.
Beyond the planned sectors, the city thins out. Rural settlements receive barely fifteen to twenty percent of their water needs from municipal supply.
Last week, on December 19, the Prime Minister inaugurated the Iqbal Flyover. Cost: Rs1.4 billion. Time taken: ninety-six days. Ahead of schedule. The same day, the Interior Minister announced Vision 2027, mentioning a task force “already working” on Ghazi Barotha.
The Ghazi Barotha channel has flowed through Attock since 2003, generating 1,450 megawatts of electricity with admirable discipline. Not a drop has touched Islamabad’s taps. Dozens of press releases, however, have arrived on time.
Press releases have advantages over pipelines. They require no land acquisition, no maintenance, and no protection against corrosion. They can be reissued every election cycle and upgraded effortlessly into visions, roadmaps, and task forces “already at work.”
Somewhere in G-10, water pressure will briefly rise again before dawn. Buckets will be filled. Files will remain open. The aquifers will sink a little further. And the next announcement will reassure everyone that relief is just around the corner. Soon. Certainly.
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