July 30, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 29, 1424

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BADIN, July 29: Thousands of people are still stranded in the flooded area of the Badin district where heavy rain and breaches in canals and the Left Bank Outfall Drain have played havoc.

Canals and drains continue to develop breaches, resulting in huge losses to lands and crops and multiplying miseries of the people.

The overflowing LBOD developed a breach at 16-L point near the Khan Shah village and inundated many villages and cultivated land. It also brought under water 300 acres of fish ponds.

The LBOD also breached at point 19-L (spinal drain) near Bagh which completely destroyed crops and cut off the Pangrio-Tharparkar Road.

In the Tando Bago taluka, the Barrage Drain developed five breaches.

A large number of villages were submerged by water and crops in Jhal Mori, Gujo and other two dehs were damaged after a big breach occurred in the Naseer Canal of the Sukkur Barrage.

According to the district administration, 28 people have died in rain-related incidents but it is believed that the toll has risen to 60.

The people caught up in inaccessible areas are starving due to absence of relief supplies.

The district administration on Tuesday stated that 70,000 people were marooned in the district’s flooded villages but Seerani Union Council Nazim Fida Hussain Mandhro and Bhugra Memon Union Council Nazim Abdul Rehman Mallah said over 125,000 were stranded in the coastal belt.

The Nazims said the delay in relief operation would result in more casualties.

They blamed the district administration for not providing exact facts and figures about the trapped people. They said the administration was relying on Tapedars who were showing only the names of those villages which were mentioned in revenue records.

The administration is also facing difficulties to meet relief demands of rain victims as it has received no funds.

Meanwhile, more than half of the people of Kadhan have shifted to Badin and other towns and have taken shelter at relief camps.

Residents of Bhudhal Panhwar, Jafar, Mohammad Hussain Panhwar, Ali Dino Shah, Nazar Mohammad Shah, Soomar Panhwar and 10 more villages complained that their houses were under seven to eight feet deep water. They said they faced problems in shifting to safer places.

They said about 1,500 people and their children were living under the open sky beside embankments of the Sher Wah and the Scape Canal.

They demanded that the stagnant water should be drained out so that they could return to their homes.

They further demanded that they should be provided with relief food packets at their houses as their families were not ready to go to relief camps which were already occupied.

Several people who climbed sand dunes to save their lives are also without food and their children have been infected with different diseases.

Briefing journalists about relief operation, DCO Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah said the people marooned in far-flung areas were being rescued through helicopters and boats.

He said more than 5,000 villages were inundated with water and 366,000 people were affected by rain. Crops on 225,500 acres were destroyed, he added.

The superintending engineer, Hesco, Rao Abdul Jabbar Khan, and the executive engineer, Imdad Hussain Abro, who camped in Badin on Tuesday, said power supply to the area would be restored in three to four days, weather permitting.