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Dr. Adiqa Kiani's Profile

Dr. Kiani is currently working as an Associate Professor of Economics at the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (FUUAST) in Islamabad. She is also Senior Editor of the Journal of Economic Sciences. She started her professional career in 1993, as a lecturer and was promoted to Associate Professor at FUUAST in 2009, after completion of her PhD from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. Dr. Kiani was awarded the Best University Teacher Award for the year 2009 by the Higher Education Commission. She has also served as chairperson of the Economics Department for three years at FUUAST Islamabad.

In 2013, Dr. Kiani successfully completed a Fulbright post-doc fellowship to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia where she collaborated with Professor Jere Behrman. She has more than 28 research publications in national and international journals. She also has international exposure and has presented papers at some of the best universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (twice), Stanford University and Polytechnique Institute California (twice). Dr. Kiani has attended conferences in Senegal, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nepal, Srilanka, Las Vegas, and Cuba to present research papers relating to business and economics. She has successfully supervised one PhD and 5 MPhil theses, and is presently supervising an additional 8 MPhil and three PhD students in the field of economics. She is also the member of American Economic Association and many national and international organizations.

Abstract

Coping with Irregular Water Supplies and Willingness to Pay for Improved Water Quality in Rawalpindi City: Primary Data Analysis

Every human being requires at least 20 to 50 liters of clean water a day for drinking, cooking, etc. Eight million people die every year from diarrheal diseases and cholera because of the highly polluted water available to them. Tens of millions of others are seriously sickened by a host of water-related ailments. Water-poor societies are usually economically poor as well, their residents are enthralled in an ongoing cycle of poverty. Therefore, the state of drinking water supplies can be quantified by four important characteristics: quality, quantity, reliability, and cost.

At the household level, the reliability of the distribution system including water timings, and quality and quantity of water supplied by WASA to the households, is critical. According to standards imposed by the World Health Organization, distribution systems should make drinking water available so that people need not travel more than one kilometer to use this important resource. For many people, there is a cost involved in having water distributed to their homes or community and households pay different types of costs to have drinking water in their homes. Water bills, cost of bottled water, opportunity cost of having water at home from certain distances, all have associated costs, which will be paid by households to ensure clean water in their homes.

Our study – based on primary data and with 100 households interviewed – concludes on the whole that the demand for drinking water is less than supply. Sixty-five percent of urban councils are dependent on piped water. On average 4-6 hours’ water supply is available throughout the day. Water in some councils is very clean like Satellite Town and in other urban councils is very dirty and unhealthy. Water borne diseases are very common in places like Raja Bazaar, Dhok Kala Khan and adjacent areas. And the area where water is not accessible, people pay a huge amount for buying tankers on weekly and commercial rates. Also, we learned that people are not aware of water borne diseases and 70% of the population of urban councils are not willing to pay and claim that it should be free. Only 30% population is willing to pay extra money, of one dollar per month apart from their utility bills for this service. However, after applying Ordinary Least Square, it is observed that on average Rs. 116 per household, is the extra amount people are willing to pay for clean water in their homes.

Water and Sanitation Agency