Streamlining WASH

As a signatory and adopter of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Goal 6, Pakistan recognises access to water and sanitation as a fundamental human right essential for dignity, health, hygiene, and development.

Despite this commitment, the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector faces significant challenges, particularly during humanitarian crises, hindering its ability to deliver effective services.

Technical and financial constraints, compounded by fragmented institutions, inadequate budgetary allocations, mismanagement, lack of transparency, and limited cross-sector collaboration, exacerbate inefficiencies. Efforts at decentralisation have often fallen short, and weak monitoring systems and insufficient focus on water resource management further impede the effective delivery of WASH services.

Tracking WASH expenditures presents another major challenge due to the absence of a unified financial monitoring and reporting system. Provinces and administrative units manage WASH services independently, resulting in fragmented data collection and inconsistent reporting nationwide. The absence of standardised tracking mechanisms also obscures the financial contributions of various stakeholders, including government agencies, donors, NGOs, the private sector, and households.

To address these challenges, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the TrackFin methodology under the Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) initiative. TrackFin provides a standardised approach for gathering and analysing financial data, enabling countries to better understand their WASH financing landscape and make informed decisions regarding planning, programming, and resource allocation.

Complementing this effort, National WASH Accounts establish a comprehensive monitoring and tracking framework that captures both financial and non-financial data within the WASH sector. This framework quantifies financial flows, such as budget allocations, expenditures, and funding sources, while also evaluating service accessibility, quality, and the health impacts of WASH interventions.

In Pakistan, the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) is charged with policy formulation, standard setting, reporting, and coordinating the country’s regional and international commitments on WASH. To enhance institutional arrangements, the MoCC established a WASH Strategic Unit in 2018. However, there is currently no unified regulatory or monitoring body responsible for conducting monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and comprehensive reporting on WASH activities.

Based on the successful implementation of TrackFin in more than 20 countries including Bangladesh and Nepal in South Asia, there is a need to establish a National WASH Account for Pakistan using the TrackFin methodology. The experiences from these countries demonstrate how robust WASH accounts can enhance financial tracking, improve resource management, and lead to the development of effective policies in the WASH sector.

Developing a National WASH Account in Pakistan would rely on a range of stakeholders at the federal, provincial, and district levels. A National Steering Committee for the WASH Account has been proposed in a policy brief of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI). This needs to be established, comprising representatives from provincial governments, AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan, and federal ministries such as climate change, finance, water, health, planning, development, and special initiatives, along with federal and provincial SDG units, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, provincial bureaus and other relevant agencies.

This committee, to be led by the WASH Unit at the Ministry of Climate Change, will provide strategic direction, approve methodologies, and ensure coordination across ministries and provinces. To enrich the process, the committee will invite sector experts from academia, NGOs, and development partners to share their knowledge and experience in WASH and financial tracking.

Using the TrackFin methodology, the committee will oversee data collection, analysis, and reporting, develop technical guidelines, and provide training opportunities. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics can play a key role in managing WASH-related financial and operational data. By leveraging existing data collection frameworks, such as the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey, the PBS can include WASH-specific financial indicators, capturing expenditure data from government bodies, NGOs, donors, development partners, and households. The WASH Unit at MoCC can also manage WASH Account-related functions for the federal territory.

At the provincial level, administrative units play a vital role in identifying, planning, and implementing WASH policies, as well as allocating and utilising budgets within their jurisdictions. Following the 18th Amendment, provinces gained greater autonomy, enabling them to address sector-specific challenges more effectively.

For instance, school WASH policies can now be tailored to local needs, addressing urban water quality issues or rural sanitation challenges, particularly in provinces such as Punjab and Sindh. This decentralised approach allows policies to be more relevant to local populations, increasing the likelihood of their success and ensuring the long-term sustainability of WASH initiatives in schools and communities.

To ensure effective data collection and transparency at the local level, District WASH Committees should be established in all districts. These committees would involve local governments, communities, and NGOs in collecting WASH-related data, fostering a collaborative approach that enhances accountability. NGOs operating within the districts would contribute their data, helping to create a comprehensive local database. This district-level data would then be linked to the provincial level and ultimately integrated into the National WASH Account at the federal level, providing a unified and transparent overview of WASH expenditures and activities across Pakistan.

A National WASH Account, developed using TrackFin’s standardised financial tracking methodology, would provide transparent data to facilitate better resource allocation, informed policymaking, and improved accountability in Pakistan’s WASH sector. Given the vulnerability of WASH facilities to climate-related hazards, integrating climate-resilient WASH (CR-WASH) measures within this framework could enhance community resilience to climate impacts.

This would support Pakistan in achieving SDG targets related to health, education, food security, and nutrition. The 2024 update to the National Climate Change Policy, currently underway, should prioritise the inclusion of CR-WASH in public planning and resource mobilisation, linking it with disaster risk reduction and climate resilience initiatives.

A well-structured National WASH Account would centralise data on water, sanitation, and hygiene, improve awareness and governance, and strengthen technical capacity for CR-WASH.

The writers work at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad.