CDA Seeks Donor Help as Water Crisis Stalls Capital’s Growth

ISLAMABAD —Islamabad’s chronic water shortage has become a brake on its development model, stalling multiple housing sectors and eroding investor confidence. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) is now seeking international donor assistance to push through long‑delayed water projects, including the Tarbela Water Scheme—but its own mandate is under a cloud.

Chairman CDA Muhammad Ali Randhawa, chairing a meeting on Saturday, warned that new sectors cannot take off without fixing the water supply gap. “Water supply is at the heart of our development agenda,” he said, directing the water directorate to package a long‑term plan for donor consideration.

Islamabad’s population has surged from under a million in 1998 to more than 2.2 million today, but its water system still runs on infrastructure installed in the 1980s and 1990s. Aquifers are dropping by over a foot annually, and tanker dependence has become the norm.

This shortfall has left key sectors—such as I‑12, E‑12, C‑15, and C‑16—struggling to attract buyers. Without plot sales, CDA’s primary revenue stream to fund salaries, electricity bills, and civic works has dried up.

The revival of the Tarbela Water Scheme, first proposed in 2008, is being framed as a centrepiece of CDA’s donor pitch. The Rs220–240 billion project aims to channel 200 million gallons per day from Tarbela Dam via a 60‑kilometre pipeline to Sangjani, where a treatment plant will distribute water across Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

But CDA’s ability to deliver is in doubt. The Islamabad High Court has ordered its dissolution, ruling that municipal powers and assets should be handed over to the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) under the 2015 Local Government Act. MCI elections have been postponed twice, leaving governance in limbo.

At the same time, CDA faces public unrest over its anti‑encroachment operations, which critics call heavy‑handed.

Whether donors buy into the CDA’s multi‑pronged plan will depend as much on its ability to overcome this legitimacy crisis as on the engineering details of the Tarbela pipeline. Until governance questions are resolved, Islamabad’s stalled development may remain bottled up.