International reporting
Pakistan: in the furnace of Jacobabad, the hottest city in the world
Audio 02:38
Water distribution by volunteers in Jacobabad, Sindh province in Pakistan, on May 12, 2022. The hottest city in the world regularly registers record temperatures, a consequence of climate change.
AFP - AAMIR QURESHI
By: Sonia Ghezali Follow
3 mins
With its 220 million inhabitants, Pakistan is one of the countries on the front line of climate change.
The south of the country faces extreme temperatures.
This is where Jacobabad is.
Plunged into extreme poverty, its inhabitants must survive this deadly heat.
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From our special correspondent in Jacobabad,
Drinking water is scarce and precious in Jacobabad.
This year, a new milestone has been reached in the hottest city in the world: the thermometer showed 51 degrees last May.
Extreme temperatures that are becoming the norm, a consequence of global warming.
There, the taps deliver only polluted and salty water, unfit for consumption and unusable even for washing.
Reservoirs of drinking water, run by local mafias, are scattered around the city.
Delivery men perched on carts pulled by donkeys fill jerrycans at sunrise.
“
There is no running drinking water in the city, so we distribute water from these supply points.
As it gets warmer, the demand increases,
explains one of them.
The city's groundwater is polluted even though this water is healthy.
I personally deliver water to about 40 homes a day.
Some buy 4 litres, others 8 and others 12 litres
”.
The liter is worth 20 rupees or 22 euro cents.
Scorching heat on construction sites
“
It is very hot!
exclaims a child carrying a bucket of water.
In the streets, children refresh themselves by pouring water drawn from the bottom of a bucket.
The women wear their duppatta, their headscarf, after having wet it.
The heat is scorching, the air humid, but on the construction sites, the workers are at work.
Azizullah Abro digs the ground with a shovel, soaked.
“
Working in this heat is very difficult.
Sometimes when I work, I feel dizzy.
I feel like my body is drained of all its energy, but I have no choice,
he says
.
If I don't earn money, I can't feed my family.
I will continue to do this work until my body allows me.
»
Azizullah receives 700 Pakistani rupees a day, or about 3.30 euros for eight hours of work.
Barely enough to feed his wife and three children.
Like the majority of the population, this father lives below the poverty line and cannot afford an air conditioner, let alone a generator to compensate for the daily power cuts.
A situation from which the pharmacies of the city suffer.
On the shelves of the dispensary which adjoins the regional hospital, the medicines suffer from the extreme heat to the great despair of the manager, Amer Lal.
“
Medicines should be stored at a temperature of around 25 degrees.
But what can we do?
It's very hot here.
There are long power cuts and we cannot install an air conditioner here,
he regrets.
Even if we had electricity all the time, we couldn't afford to use air conditioning because it would double the price of our electricity bills.
»
Customers know this very well and leave with their boxes of medicine without asking any questions.
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Pakistan
Climate change
Water