Lower Sindh rains: where the fault lies

THE two-week spell of rains in Sindh, especially in lower Sindh, has created distressing conditions. More than 80 people have lost their lives, many thousands have been displaced and standing crops worth tens of millions have been lost. Those who could save their lives have found safer places, but stay shelterless and destitute.

Means of communications have been badly affected, and on Tuesday even the chief minister of the province could not find a way to get to the marooned people in Kaloee.

The federal and provincial governments have announced relief for the displaced people, but reports coming from camps and stranded people paint a pathetic picture. Except for Edhi workers, no NGO and no government official has so far reached the stranded people and the fear is that if no food, water, medicines and other life-sustaining assistance is made available without further loss of time, epidemics may take a heavy toll.

Natural disaster are part of human life and one can only hope to reduce their severity and help restore normal life at the earliest. We have no such support system. Places like Badin, Thatta and Tharparkar districts are not far from the provincial capital, but even in this era of fast communications, it is disgraceful that we cannot make available a couple of days’ food to those stranded or living in relief camps.

The districts of Badin, Thatta and Tharparkar are no strangers to misfortune. After every few years the people of these areas face either drought or heavy rains. Apart from the desert of Tharparkar, the case of Badin and Thatta districts is a typical one which can be tackled by reviewing technical issues and setting aside some money.

First the topography of the two districts is deltaic which is rising slightly. Open drains were dug in the late 1960s to drain out saline water on the advice of a foreign consulting firm, which without surveying the physical geography made its suggestions. A couple of years later, when the first heavy rainfall occurred in 1967, all these drains began flowing in reverse order, i.e., from the sea to the villages, submerging them along with crops in a large area of the two districts. Much loss of life and material damage was caused.

In the mid-1990s, when the drainage project was undertaken on a larger scale, the same mistake was repeated. This time the projects were the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) and the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD), to be implemented at much higher expenditure. When the people came to know about them and there likely consumers, they opposed the plan but nobody paid any heed to the warning. Today we are paying for this ill-planning. Heavy rains do affect people’s life everywhere but there are also other factors contributing to add to human misery. Today much damage had been caused by these saline drains dug under the RBOD which, owing to reverse flow, has breached at multiple places.

The first and foremost step should be to provide immediate relief to the marooned people. Let our rulers remind themselves that like the past, they should prevent the traditional bungling in relief stocks and the money meant, the needy. NGOs, dotted throughout the province in countless numbers, should put in an effort at the right time instead of using the disaster for public relationing when things turn normal.

Finally, the question of finding a durable solution. For this, knowledge of the topography of the deltaic area and rectifying the saline drainage system have to be technically and honestly undertaken without attaching political strings to the task. Otherwise, misfortunes of the kind will keep recurring.