HYDERABAD: ‘Issue raised to cover up Thal canal construction’:
Bureau Report
HYDERABAD, Aug 26: The Anti-Greater Thal Canal Action Committee has rejected the stand taken by President Gen Pervez Musharraf that more dams are required on the River Indus to save agriculture of Sindh as an attempt to misguide the people of Sindh.
In a statement issued here on Tuesday, the action committee said that the president’s insistence on the construction of Kalabagh dam and his meeting with academics and intellectuals to solicit support for the same were only meant to divert the attention of Sindh from the ongoing construction of the greater Thal canal.
The committee said that the president kept on saying that he was from Sindh but he had proved to be an advocate of the interests of a particular province as his words and actions were against the interests of Sindh.
It said that the establishment had been committing water-related crimes against Sindh and those who were telling the people of Sindh to forget the past and look forward should remember the past four years when Sindh was clamouring for water while Punjab was harvesting bumper and record crops, cultivating sugarcane on 150,000 more acres of land and rice on 120,000 more acres of land.
It argued that it was made possible by enforcing the bogus water sharing formula of 1994 which allowed full share to the NWFP and Balochistan and more water to Punjab than what it should have received.
The action committee said that the directive of the chief executive to abandon the 1994 formula was disregarded as a result Sindh suffered.
It said that the last four years indicated that the power lied with a particular province and the federal government as well as Wapda acted in the interests of the province.
The action committee reminded the president, the province and Wapda that Pakistan was a federation in which provinces were deemed as equal partners.
It emphasised that the people of Sindh had legal and constitutional rights that could not be abrogated by one province.
For the sake of integrity and solidarity of the country, the committee demanded, the work on the Thal canal should be stopped and the construction of storage dams should not be advocated.
Instead, it said, measures should be taken for integrated management of water resources that met the demands of the people of the country without trampling on the legal and constitutional rights of the people of any province.
SNC: The Sindh National Council at a meeting held here on Monday expressed concern over the efforts of President Gen Pervez Musharraf to revive the Kalabagh dam issue.
The meeting reminded the president about his promise to eliminate disharmony among the provinces and sense of deprivation among the people of smaller provinces.
The meeting noted that due to repeated violation of the water agreements by Punjab, the people of Sindh had lost faith in government institutions and the rulers.
The meeting observed: “Not a single son of Sindh will agree to the construction of Kalabagh dam and Thal canal.”
