KABUL: Zaker Hussain Zaheri was a cook in Afghanistan’s capital who lost his job in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, he digs trenches to capture rainwater and snowmelt on a mountain on the outskirts of Kabul, as the city grapples with both a water and health crisis.

Lockdown measures to curb the spread of the disease have taken their toll on Afghanistan’s economy, so the government is employing more than 40,000 jobless workers to rehabilitate groundwater supplies for its fast-growing capital.

“This is a tough job, but I have to do it to earn enough for food, and I have pride that I take part in the reconstruction of my country, this is good for the future of our country,” Zaheri, 28, said.

Planned to run for at least a year with twelve billion Afghanis ($155 million) in funding, the Kabul water project is paying labourers at least 300 afghanis ($3.90) per day to dig close to 150,000 trenches, as well as 17 small dams and spillways, on the outskirts of the mountainous Afghan capital.

After work, Zaheri drinks tea and eats bread at home with his seven children. His eldest daughter Laila, 10, said she appreciated her father taking risks in going to out work on a mountain in the middle of a pandemic.

“The rich people don’t go out, and they stay at their homes at this juncture, but my father goes out and works for us,” she said.

Kabul’s groundwater supplies – its primary source of drinking water – have been over-exploited, putting the city of up to seven million people at risk of severe shortages, experts say.

A study published in May by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), an independent think-tank, calculated that the city’s groundwater levels had decreased by about 1 meter per year over the past two decades.

Some parts of central Kabul have seen drops of as much as 30 meters over 14 years, the study said.

The water project, run by the state’s National Development Corporation, aims to boost groundwater levels while also increasing greenery to improve water and air quality, spokesman Mohammad Mustafa Naveed told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Afghanistan has joined a growing global trend of countries, including neighbouring Pakistan, turning to “green stimulus” projects to address two urgent challenges at once: keeping the economy running through the pandemic and tackling the effects of climate change.

The network of trenches focused on six locations will store and absorb the rainwater and snowmelt Afghanistan gets in the winter and spring, but which is usually wasted through flash flooding, Naveed explained.

“In the second phase of the project, 13 million saplings will be planted along these trenches and thousands more people will be employed to plant and preserve them,” he added.

The trees will be mainly local species that require less water, such as pistachio and pine nut, Naveed said.

While climate change has led to more frequent short rainstorms, the number of longer rainfall events needed to gradually recharge groundwater has decreased, said the author of the AREU study, Najibullah Sadid.

Rising temperatures cause higher rates of evaporation, which also shrinks groundwater supplies, noted Sadid, a researcher at the University of Stuttgart in Germany.

In addition, the study pointed to Kabul’s increasing urbanization – meaning more paved surfaces that block rain and snow from seeping into the ground – and its booming population, which is drawing groundwater faster than it can be topped up.

“The Kabul population has doubled since 2001, while the groundwater recharge remains constant and may have even decreased,” Sadid noted.

As a result, groundwater levels are falling at an “alarming rate”, which could push people to start tapping unsafe water sources, he added.

That would pose risks to health and livelihoods almost as serious as war and air pollution, Sadid warned.