September 5, 2003	Friday	Rajab 7, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Sept 4: Chairperson Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Benazir Bhutto, in a letter sent to Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, has expressed her concern over the death and destruction of farmers in Sindh because of the “negligence of authorities to maintain the Left Bank Outfall Drain.”

The letter, released by the party’s media office here on Thursday, Benazir Bhutto called for the immediate release of funds for repairing the LBOD.

Accusing the government of handing over the project’s management to the Sindh Irrigation Department without the provision of adequate funding in this regard thus avoiding the LBOD’s repairs, the PPP leader reminded that the project had been handed over in 2000. “This meant in real terms that a cash- strapped provincial authority was unable to take the measures necessary to strengthen the LBOD,” she stated.

Benazir Bhutto said the LBOD was built poorly with “corruption eating away the amount of cement and strengthening that was needed to enable it to withstand cyclones and rains. As a result, nearly half a million people were displaced and ruined by rains in coastal areas, including Badin, Thatta and other districts which affected 200 villages.

Deploring post-PPP governments’ inability to invest in the LBOD strengthening it making it capable of shunting out sea water, Benazir Bhutto said that the lack of investment in this regard had wreaked havoc on the once fertile lands, displacing farmers and affecting the country’s agricultural output.

“The spectacle of hungry ... children without homes and belongings is particularly painful for all of us as well as the ... plight of our ... brothers and sister,” the former prime minister wrote. She complained that no one had been made accountable for “the poor work by Wapda.”

She asked the prime minister to make the funding immediately available to strengthen the entire LBOD waterway to prevent such disasters in the future.