A view of the Gwadar port of Pakistan Photo: VCG

While the rest of Pakistan’s major cities were drenched in monsoon rains, a group of children stood hand in hand and chorused this in unison in Gwadar’s New Tobagh Ward near Koh-a-Bun Ward:

“Pani Dho, bijli dho, warna Kursi Chor Dho.” ( Give us water, give us electricity, or vacate the chair).

As Gwadar and its surrounding villages and towns are confronting an escalated water crisis, protests — and this slogan to ask for water — have become common across the city. Just a day later, another group of women and children from the Assa Ward and Lal Baksh Ward blocked the iconic Marine Drive demanding for water. A similar protest was held at shaheed Lala Hameed chowk, a symbolic site for past mass demonstrations and mobilisations under Maulana Hidayatur Rehman.

The irony of Gwadar’s situation especially pertaining to its water crisis cannot be overstated. The port city is often showcased as the linchpin of the China’s Belt and Road Initiative. A future city akin to Dubai where boulevards would be wide, sprawling ferries and yachts would dot the Padi Zir (East Bay) and towering cranes would cast the silhouette of a rising metropolis but beneath all this facade unfolds a harsh truth: the children of this city still carry Jerry cans in search for water.

With a population of 0.2 million, Gwadar city currently needs over 5 million gallons of water daily, however, the municipal pipeline network supplies only a meagre 2 million gallons per day, according to the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department. Assuming that if a single person needs 30 to 50 gallons per day for domestic need, the demand for residential water is still unmet — excluding factors like industrial, commercial, CPEC-oriented infrastructure and future growth which could push the demand over 10-20 MGD.

“The Ankara Kaur Dam — built in 1995 to provide 1.62 MGD has silted up significantly and is completely dead now,” says Javed MB, journalist and founder of Gwadar-a-Tawar, a local news outlet.

Given that Ankar Kaur Dam is completely non-functional, the city is solely reliant on the tankers from the Mirani Dam from the nearby Kech district. The cost? Over 20 million per month, much of which lacks transparency in public audits. Two recently connected dams; Sawar and Shadi Kaur dams are vulnerable to seasonal rainfall, with their long distances causing delays in peak demand and transmission loses.

City dwellers need to stand on public standpipes or buy water from private tankers, priced Rs. 3000 to 5000 per 100 gallon load. For low income families whose income is less than 20,000 monthly, it is untenable.

“On normal days, a tanker costs 21 to 25 thousands, however, with most of the dams dried up, the tankers are selling water in black at a rate of thirty thousands,” says Javed. “The official rate, as set by the district administration and Deputy commissioner of Gwadar recently, is 20 thousands per tanker, but it is rarely enforced.”

The network of pipelines laid by the government are grossly adequate while many of the laid pipes are poorly maintained. Some are clogged and others contain contaminated water. In 2025, the completion of an overarching network of 158 km of pipelines linking the Ankara, Sawar and Shadi Kaur Dam and four underground reservoirs have helped some communities receive water, such as Faqeer colony and Dhoor, according to GDA, chief Engineer, Syed Mohammad Baloch. Howbeit, official data shows that almost 50 per cent of homes in the district receive pipelined water — with 44 per cent through direct connections and 56 per cent via stand posts or public tanks — while the rest rely on tanker mafia, wells and pond water which is often unhealthy and contaminated.

Desalination plants and the impacts

The much touted desalination plants have not also receded the crisis. The district has three plants which either never worked or were inconsistent at best due to bureaucratic hurdles, mass corruption and chronic power outages.

“These desalination plants are like museum exhibits,” Javed laments. “They are there. You can look at it. But they don’t feed the thirsty.”

The biggest one located in Karwat, which remains non-functional even it has been officially inaugurated thrice — by the Nawaz Sharif, PTI and PPP governments. The other two are located in Sur Bandar and on Koh-a-Batil respectively. In response to the growing water crisis in the city, another seawater desalination plant was inaugurated in 2023 with the help of the Chinese government under the funding of CPEC. The new plant was aimed to produce 1.2 million gallons per day — producing a small fraction of the city’s estimated demand of 16 to 22 MGD.

For many people living in and around Gwadar, water is not just a problem — it defines their daily life. Girls drop out of schools to stand in community posts or fetch water many kilometres away every day. There has been a rise in diseases like diarrhoea, cholera, dehydration, back pain and constant depression on women owing to the constant stress of water shortage.

The economic impact of water shortage has also affected the fishermen of Gwadar. Fishing, which is the sole income of the coastal towns, needs water in ice making, preserving catch and washing their nets. Therefore, they spend their money in buying water than they earn from selling fish. “What they earn from catching fish in one trip, the money is spent on purchasing water and fuel. This becomes impossible for these hand to mouth fishermen,” says Javed.

Thirst in the Hinterlands

In the vast coastal belt of Balochistan, just behind the shimmering billboards and free-trade zones of Gwadar city, the far-flung villages of Jiwani, Pasni, Kulanch, Sur bandar, Ormara and Pishukaan are parched. Unlike the port city of Gwadar , these villages seldom make headlines — yet the shortage of water has also steadily worsened there over the years.

“We don’t have any water to drink, let alone for bathing,” Dur Muhammad laments as he leans to scoop water out from a shallow and brackish well that he needs to re-dig everyday. “We come here with motorcycles. Some come with their donkeys and a few even walk the distance on foot. All we ask for is water. But nothing changes and no one listens.”

Dur Muhammad, 30, lives in Dasht Kurmi, a village located in Suntsar, Tehsil Jiwani, just four kilometers before the BP-250 checkpoint — or commonly known as the Gabd Rimdan-250 border. This village lies between two great ports — approximately 120km east of Iran’s Chabahar port and 70km west of the Gwadar port, yet the people feel a world apart.

Having a population of around 400 and inaccessible by road, requiring travel by sea on boats due to the lack of road infrastructure, Dasht Kurmi is divided into four local settlements: Faqeer Muhammad Bazaar, Hammal Bazaar, Kalar Bazaar and Kahuda Sadiq Bazaar. In these dusty settlements, water has also become a defining clock of life.

“The acutest water shortage in the Gwadar district is being experienced in Jiwani Tehsil,” Javed adds. “The locals in this area have turned to natural ways of water conservation.”

When it rains, which is very rare, the villagers dig wide and narrow trench-shaped earthen ponds to collect water during or before the rainy seasons to collect the runoff of the nearby streams. These makeshift catchment basins temporarily become lifelines which the people of Dasht Kurmi depend on for weeks.

Once they dry, the locals resort to digging small hand-dug wells –locally known as Khaneegs — to collect the little water that remains three meters beneath the cracked soil. This technique, like in Dasht Kurmi has passed through generations throughout the peripheral areas of water-scarce Gwadar where government-funded pipelines, including those under the CPEC umbrella, rarely reach.

For the people of Jiwani, a tehsil just 70 kilometers from the Gwadar city, water also came via a network of pipelines from the — now dead — Ankra Kaur Dam. But the locals have also been left at the mercy of the tanker mafia.

Protests in Jiwani have been very deadly since the inception. Three people including a child named Yasmeen, were reportedly killed on 21 February in 1987 by the firing of the security forces when the protesters were rallying for water. Despite an allocation of Rs 937 million rupees in 2021 for building dams and pipelines, little progress has been seen in Jiwani as of 2025.

According to an estimate from the provincial government, the Gwadar city and its adjoining Town of Jiwani which accounted for nearly 200,000 people as of 2012, needed 3.5 million gallons of water daily, however, the normal daily delivery was 2 million gallons, leaving an enormous shortfall of 1.5 million gallons every day.

Towns of Empty cans

“The people living close to the Pasni city spend more time looking for water than at the sea,” says Waqar Ghafoor, a resident of Reek-a-Pusht, Pasni. “ Every morning, the locals here take their containers and wait by the side of the roads, hoping that a private tanker may pass by. The water from the tankers is often brackish and unfit to drink and some time there is no tankers at all. They wait under the sun for hours. This is not living, we are only surviving.”

Pasni, a fishing town of 100,000 residents, is supplied by the Shadi Kaur Dam, built in 2004 — also supplying to the nearby town of Ormara. By now, the dam has gradually silted and damaged, providing only little water. The daily requirement of Pasni in 2011, with a population of 50,000 back then, stood at 1.5 million gallons per day while the actual supply was less than 1.0 million gallons per day — fulfilling barely 6 per cent of the total need.

“We receive water from the Shadi Kaur Dam via pipelines which are poured into big tanks built in the city and from these tanks is a network of other pipes distributing water to the households,” explains Waqar Ghafoor. “Though the residents of Reek a Pusht, where I live, receive some amount of water but the people living in the city confront a dire water shortage. The pipelines are broken or stolen there and pumping stations are shut down or remain without fuel for days due to administrative issues.”

Following the collapse of the Shadi Kaur Dam which killed as many as 70 people and devastated homes, lives and agricultural land in the town in 2005, the dam was rebuilt in 2010 by the help of the Federal Public Sector Development Programme. Being built at a cost of Rs 7.9 billion rupees and with a storage capacity of 37,000 acre‑feet (45,600,000 cubic metres), the dam was expected to supply 70 cusecs (cubic feet per second). But it now supplies just 12 cusecs to the towns of Pasni and Ormara — 8 cusecs to the agriculture sector and 4 to the tanker trucks.

While there is hardly any rain observed in the area, the dam’s storage capacity has dropped down to less than 30 per cent, according to local officials.

Kulaanch, another town, some few kilometers from the Gwadar port is also dependent on the Sawar Dam, the same dam that also supplies to the Gwadar city.

“Some villages of Kulaanch are connected to the pipeline network while others aren’t,” says Ishaque Ibrahim, a resident of Beelaar, Kulanch, whose family has now relocated to the nearby Kech district due to water shortage.

Ishaque tells that though Sawar Dam technically serves the area, but the distribution of water isn’t equal. “You can get water from the reservoir only if you have recommendations. Therefore, only the affluent and the well-connected to the district’s Irrigation Department get the supply while the poor are left at the mercy of the private tanker mafia, which charge 21 to 25 thousands — a sum only a few can afford.”

The water crisis in the district is both manmade and natural. The geography of the Makran Coast compounds this issue — hot and dry terrain with a thin freshwater lens means that freshwater is not merely limited in the division but also risks sea water intrusion. Rising sea levels keep destroying homes built on the brink of the sea by one wave and the other especially in Pishukan and Ganz and salt water intrusion into inland aquifers have rendered many community wells useless. For many villages, hand pumps churn out saline water which damages the skin.

Dams and Desalination: The peripheral Paradox

Establishing desalination plants in the peripheral areas dates back to 2008. Four desalination plants were decided to be deployed in the district in 2017. One for the Gwadar city at a cost of Rs 1 billion and three others in Jiwani, Pasni and Singhar — each with a cost of Rs 20 million. By 2017, only the one in Gwadar was functional and the others remained non-operational owing to bureaucratic delays and lack of staff. The Gwadar Seawater Desalination plant that opened in 2023 supplies to the city only, while the areas in the periphery remain out its direct service.

In April 2023, two reverse osmosis (RO) plants were inaugurated for Sur bandar and Chabarkani —  hometown of MPA Mulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman — but they don’t reach the remote towns of Pasni, Pishukaan, Ormara or Jiwani.

Fixing the flow

The Solution to the Water crisis is neither prohibitively expensive nor complex.

Abdullah Rahim, who runs a page — Makran Weather Forecast — says that building small and medium sized dams around the district to trap seasonal or monsoon rains could drastically reduce the dependency on the faraway sources like Mirani Dam and reviving and desiltation of Ankra Kaur and Shadi Kaur Dam could bring back millions of gallons of water into circulation.

“ Local hydrologists believe that building small dams on the hilly catchment areas of Nigwar and Kulaanch can help reduce the dependency,” says Abdullah Rahim. He also adds that this neglect was absorbed in February 2024, when an unseasonal shower struck Gwadar district, dropping 183 millimetres of rain in just 30 hours — more than it’s normal average rainfall.

“All the streets were under water and people were stranded. And when the rain receded, there was not a single reservoir or water body to show for it,” regrets Abdullah. “There were no check dams. No retention ponds. This precious rainwater simply ran into the Arabian Sea.” Officials believe that if 30 per cent of that water was stored, Gwadar’s water demand could have been fulfilled for months.

Javed MB, on the other hand believes that Gwadar or the Makran division doesn’t come under the jurisdiction of the traditional path of Pakistan’s Monsoon belt. Therefore, though dams can also help when its rains, but what about years when it doesn’t? Ostensibly, Pakistan Meteorological Department has also warned earlier that the Makran Coast is becoming drier and hotter over the years, with longer dry spells and shorter monsoon periods.

“We need to operationalize the existing desalination plants in Gwadar and the nearby towns. While solar-powered small filtration units could serve off-grid villages,” Javed says.

Water in Gwadar has no longer a resource, it is a commodity of inclusion or exclusion and a test of loyalty to the land or just a departure, provoking one to question: Is Gwadar being built for its current poor residents or for an envisioned future of investors or gated economic zones?

And yet, in every evening as the cranes of the port continue their slow rotation, with ships being unloaded and their horns echoing in the dusk, somewhere in the hills or a river, a girl returns to her home with a jerry-can, half full. Her back aches, with the water tasting metallic. But she and the others don’t have another choice, since for the world, Gwadar may be a port of luxury and opportunity but for the locals, it is a port of thirst.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.