HYDERABAD: Growers demand implementation of water accord
Bureau Report
HYDERABAD, May 4: Growers on Saturday demanded of the government to implement the 1991 Water Accord, keep original course of the Right Bank Outfall Drain intact and provide help for exporting surplus sugar stock.
The demands were made in a meeting of the working committee of the Sindh Abadgar Board, which was presided over by its president, Abdul Majeed Nizamani.
Deliberating over the repercussions of water shortage in Sindh and violation of the 1991 accord, participants of the meeting accused a particular province of trying to destroy Sindh by way of constructing the outfall drain as well as by creating an artificial shortage of water in the province.
Mr Nizamani, on the occasion, said that the Board considered the 1991 accord a national covenant.
He said the accord had been drafted after making sincere efforts spanning over half a century and it had enjoyed the consensus of the four provinces.
Temporary adjustments, he said, to the document were understandable but permanent deviations and violation of the accord could prove to be disastrous in the long run.
Sindh, he said, considered the accord a sacrosanct document, adding that the release of water downstream Kotri was the very soul of accord.
The judicious implementation of each and every word of the accord was the constitutional, legal and moral responsibility of the federating units, Mr Nizamani said.
Enumerating the reasons for the crisis in the agricultural sector of Sindh, the president of the Board said that the province’s agriculture sector in general and the sugar industry in particular was in deep trouble due to apathy of the government.
Stressing the need for exporting surplus stock of sugar, he said that in the absence of the export facility, the sugar mills had been left with no other option but to declare the closure of their mills from next year.
He called upon the federal and provincial governments to provide facilities for the export of surplus sugar and warned that any delay or red-tapism in this regard would plunge the province’s agriculture sector into deep trouble. The meeting also sought better payment to the sugarcane growers.
