When the water supply systems of Rawalpindi and Lahore were designed, these were cities of a few hundred thousand people. Today they are home to millions. The pipes are the same. The treatment plants are largely the same. The problem is straightforward: the infrastructure was never designed for this.
A System Built for a Different Era
I have spent over twenty years working on urban infrastructure projects across Pakistan. The consistent finding, city after city, is the same: water distribution networks are operating far beyond their designed capacity, often with minimal maintenance. Non-Revenue Water — water that enters the system but never reaches a paying consumer due to leaks and theft — averages 35-50% in most Pakistani cities. In some areas, it exceeds 60%.
To put that in practical terms: for every two litres pumped into Rawalpindi's network, one litre is lost before it reaches anyone. The city is paying to pump water that disappears into the ground through cracked pipes laid decades ago.
"Fixing Non-Revenue Water losses is the single highest return investment a Pakistani city can make in water supply. It costs a fraction of building new capacity and delivers water that is already being paid for."
The Planning Gap
The Private Tanker Sector as Parallel Infrastructure
From an urban systems perspective, the private water tanker sector has emerged as a form of parallel infrastructure — filling the service gap that formal municipal systems cannot cover. This is not unique to Pakistan. Cities across the developing world have seen informal water markets emerge in response to failing public utilities.
The difference is that in Pakistan, this parallel system remains almost entirely unstructured. There is no data, no regulation, no quality assurance, and no coordination with formal systems. Digital platforms that organise this sector — bringing verification, tracking, and accountability to tanker operators — are performing a genuine urban infrastructure function. They are making a disorganised parallel system into something approximating a service.
Long-Term Solutions
Sustainable solutions require political commitment to multi-decade infrastructure investment. Pipe replacement programmes, new treatment capacity, and genuine enforcement of building codes that mandate water recycling in large developments. None of this is technically difficult. All of it requires institutional willpower that has been absent for too long.