Can Private Water Vendors Help Meet the Millennium Development Goals? - A Study of Karachi City Urban Water Market

Abstract

This working paper examines the role of Private Water Vendors (PWV) in supplying water to urban dwellers in city of Karachi, Pakistan. The increasing gap in the water supply-demand in Karachi has meant that communities especially the urban poor have had to rely on alternate suppliers i.e. informal PWV to meet their water needs. It is estimated that 60% of the piped consumers in Karachi also supplement their water needs from PWV due to interrupted official. PWV are often viewed as temporary rent seekers taking advantage of unreliable public services so as to exploit customers with overpriced low quality water supply. Both governments and international agencies often ignore PWV as they reflect a failure on part of the government to supply clean piped water to its citizens. However, PWV role should not be ignored as they fill a critical market gap of ensuring water access to communities that otherwise are underserved. Often operating in competitive environments, PWV buy (and illegally extract) bulk water from local water utilities and supply through tankers, kiosks and carts mostly to urban poor in localities that do not have piped connections. Only recently are these PWV being increasingly recognized as providing complimentary services. They are seen as "gap fillers" in countries with high coverage areas and low service quality and are pioneering operations in areas where there is no public service. Global statistics, unfortunately, do not recognize the contributions of PWV towards the targets of Millennium Development Goals (MDG), yet PWV are the difference between water and no water in many urban communities. Using the specific case study of Karachi, Pakistan, this paper explores the wider debate that PWV contribute (at least in spirit if not statistically) towards achieving the MDG.