Affluent people often use mineral and purified water sealed in bottles, while ordinary and poor residents have no choice but to live on almost contaminated water coming through underground pipelines from water tanks with poor management.
Likewise, other national infrastructure like water supply systems has also been badly damaged due to more than three decades of war and civil strife in Afghanistan.
In most of the villages, there is no water supply through pipelines and residents especially women have to travel hundreds of meters and even miles daily with pitchers on their heads to fetch drinking water which in many cases is not hygienic.
Continued drought and protracted war added to the environmental problems in the war-ravaged central Asian state.
Air pollution has also been contributing to contaminating underground water sources in Afghanistan.
The head of Afghan Environment Directorate Mustafa Zahir has warned that 68 percent of Kabul's underground water is contaminated.
"Living condition would become impossible within the next seven years if the status quo of air pollution continues in Kabul and other major towns," Zahir said at a seminar in Kabul in April this year.
Air pollution in Afghan big cities particularly in the capital city Kabul has reached an alarming point, Zahir said at the seminar, while warning of dire consequences if air pollution is not checked.
The polluted air and water may lead directly to an estimated 3, 000 deaths annually just in Kabul where the sanitation system is poor and hundreds of tons of garbage is produced daily, according to the Afghan Health Ministry.
Although there is no official statistics, it is believed that some eight million Afghans live under poverty line and survive on one U.S. dollar income daily.
Agha is not alone that has been suffering from acute shortage of drinking water.
Another teen Ahmad living in the Col-e-Hashmat Khan area said that he also needs to carry bucket of water at least four times daily from the well to his home, saying, "nearly half of my day time is lost in carrying water and little energy is left to study and do my school homework."
Special Report: Afghanistan Situation
