As many as 2.2 million people die due to water related diseases most of them are children under the age of five and 1.1 billion people around the world still lack access to improved water supply and more than 2.6 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, said Indonesian Ambassador to Pakistan His Excellency Mr. Ishak Latuconsina on Tuesday.

He was addressing the inaugural session of a seminar organized by UAF Water Management Research Centre as chief guest here in new senate hall. He said contaminated drinking water is a major cause of illness, and human health is severely impacted by water-related diseases as well as by chemical pollution discharged to water. Mr. Ishak Latuconsina assured full cooperation from his mission for exchange of information and sharing of experiences in water management from Indonesia “We need to work together and harder to turn words into deeds to bring measurable difference in our people’s lives” he added.

He wished an enduring and successful partnership between the educational institutions of Indonesia with the UAF in various areas including research and academia etc. He assured his full cooperation of exchanging information and sharing of experiences in water management to cope with the challenging. He said that the day was initiated to create awareness among the masses regarding the water sanctity and to preserve it for the coming generation.  He said that the Pakistan had largest irrigation system in the world.

Earlier UAF VC Prof. Dr. Iqrar Ahmad Kham told that UAF to broaden its role as a Community Builder, is to provide an environment of interactive learning, knowledge and experience sharing, questioning, discussions, feedback and social interaction among all stakeholders such as, teachers, researchers, farmers, industrialists, entrepreneurs, students etc. He informed the gathering that UAF was in a way to make new partners for future collaboration with national and international organizations. He said that UAF and Bogar University Indonesia are going to jointly hold a bilateral conference in mid May at UAF. Dr. Ahmad termed the seminar a wake up call to sensitize the masses about the emerging challenges of water scarcity and quality. He revealed that per capita water availability declined from 5600 cubic meter in 1950 to 1300 cubic meter in 2010.

Prof. Dr. Zulfiqar Ahmad Chairman Dept. of Earth Sciences, Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad delivered a keynote address asked for collective efforts in promoting awareness aiming to arrest the water wastage in drinking, domestic use and irrigation by adopting best water management strategies. He pointed out that with each passing day the water is becoming scare and Pakistan is being counted in a danger zone. He told that in some areas of the country people forced to migrate to other places due to non-availability of fresh water for human and animals. Dr. Zulfiqar highlighted the factors of water scarcity and quality and said that low rain, soil erosion, population growth were the major players of the crises.

Prof. Dr.  Rai Niaz Ahmad, Dean, Faculty of Agri. Engineering & Technology  said that the good water quality is a basic need of healthy world, a healthy country and healthy house. He said that poor quality contributes each year 4 billion cases of diarrhea. He said discharging wastewater without treatment into environment has health and ecological impacts. Considerable agricultural lands in peri urban area are using raw waste mater for irrigation and producing poison-loaded vegetables for our food chain, he added.     He told that the technical session of the seminar would be held on March 24th with Engineer Shamus-ul-Mulk as chief guest. Later the visiting ambassador inspected the agri exhibition and flower show. He took keen interest in the exhibition and asked some questions.