DADU: Waterlogging is an essential byproduct of the canal irrigation system. If not checked appropriately, it causes permanent loss of arable land. After the construction of barrages at Guddu, Sukkur, and Kotri, waterlogging and salinity took its toll. To check it, the government started multi-million projects to dispose of this water into the sea. The Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) was started and completed component-wise but the results of this project are still awaited.

On the western bank, a similar project, the Right Blank Outfall Drain (RBOD), was started with an allocation of Rs14 billion. This consists of two phases: RBOD-1 and RBOD-II. RBDO-1 was completed by Wapda’s Scarp. Phase 1 is further divided into three parts: a) Hamal Lake (commonly known as the MNV drain), b) remodelling of Hamal Lake (from Fareedabad to Garhi bungalow) and c) Hamal Lake to zero point (middle of Qambar and Shahdadkot).

RBOD-1 consists of 31 units and out of these seven units pertain to Balochistan.

RBOD-II was started in 2001 to be completed by 2006. ? Progress is 30 per cent. It consists of 273 km from Karmpur village near Sehwan Sharif to Gharo creek. The project includes three super passages at Nai Sann, Nai Baran and Weeh Dari, with many RCC structures.

At Bhago Thoro, RD-60 to RD-68 Indus river has been diverted 400ft towards eastern side by providing a boom. In Thatta district near Jherruk from RD-641 to RD-650 there was an obstacle in the form of 170ft mountain which is to be cut. Sixty-five per cent work on this part has been done. Work on Sehwan-Lakki Shah Saddar is also in progress which is the third difficult part of the project.

RBOD is a chain of three projects starting from Hairuddin, Balochistan, passing through Larkana, Shahdadkot, Dadu, Jamshoro, and Thatta districts to the sea.

The RBOD-3 has not been launched yet, whereas work on RBOD-2 is in progress. What environmental and health effects might arise, the Manchhar Lake faces potential threat.

There are two sources of filling Manchhar Lake i.e., Nai Gaaj which brings rain water; the other is the Main Nara Valley (MNV) drain. Manchhar Lake is directly connected with the Indus river by the Danister Wah and Aral Wah near Sehwan Sharif, and both flow in a two-way system depending on water flow. At present, Manchhar Lake’s water depth has reached 109.5 ft. Irrigation officials have expressed the fear that if the water level is not lowered to 105 feet it could overflow.

They say that to prevent any mishap it has been decided to release lake’s water into the Indus river in the ratio of 1:30. But, if more water is discharged into the river, diseases might break out as happened last year in Hyderabad.

One solution to this problem could be to disconnect the MNV drain from Manchhar and to connect it with the RBOD-II. This can only be done when the pace of work is expedited and completed within the stipulated period.

Apart from this the government is planning to construct the Nai Gaaj Dam as part of its Vision 2025 plan. A final feasibility of this project is to be completed in June 2006. It will be a 125 ft-high dam with a storage capacity of 0.20 million acre feet and a command area of 2500 acres.

Its cost is estimated at Rs1.51 billion in the first stage. In 1995, the water of Nai Gaaj was recorded at over 20 ft at the Gaaj bungalow which flooded hundreds of villages of the Kachho belt. The area can hopefully see better days if Nai Gaaj is constructed and The MNV is diverted from flowing into Manchhar Lake.

HIKKADUWA (Sri Lanka): Stumbling in the tropical heat after a 40-hour flight from St. Louis in the United States, volunteers from the evangelical charity Service International have been put right to work building homes for Sri Lankan tsunami survivors. Working alongside rehabilitating heroin addicts from a Sri Lankan Christian activist group, they are building simple 336-square-foot cement block homes in Hikkaduwa, a budget beach resort on Sri Lanka’s tsunami-battered southwest coast.

“Our dream is to build 100 homes,” said Ed Fasnacht, Service International’s supervisor for the project. “There’s 55,000 homes that need to be built, so there’s plenty of room for everyone.” The cement block homes with asbestos roof tiles are going up in the midst of temporary wooden shacks, which house the survivors now. Across the street is one of the many tiny, tattered tent camps that dot Sri Lanka’s coastline.

This neighbourhood, where 14 of the 21 tsunami victims were children, is home to a group of Tamil Hindus and Christians who come from the lowest strata of society. But they are among the first of Sri Lanka’s half-million people displaced in the disaster to get permanent homes. And so the last shall be first.

The project illustrates certain features of the recovery effort after one of the strongest earthquakes in history set off a colossal tsunami last Dec. 26 that killed an estimated 228,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations.

Five months after the disaster, the reconstruction effort has barely begun. Progress has been uneven, leading to concerns about how equitable the effort is. And it is being spearheaded by private aid groups, many of them little-known outfits such as Service International working with local counterparts.

Billions of dollars in private aid raised across the world — from girl scout raffles, bowling leagues, Rotarians and Unitarians, Jewish bake sales and Islamic charities — are being channelled to a veritable Noah’s Ark of aid groups.

As in Sri Lanka, one of the most disadvantaged groups in Thailand has been among the early settlers into permanent quarters. With money raised by Thai students, the Moken, a tribe of sea gypsies who had mostly lived in self-contained houseboats, have shifted into new homes on stilts, with thatched bamboo walls and insulated tin roofs outside Ban Nam Khem, a coastal town nearly obliterated by the giant waves.

“We’re happy with the new homes,” said Sewbee Leeskoon, 52. “The walls are nice, the roof is strong and we really like the balcony because you can see everyone now.”

In an adjacent neighbourhood, another band of sea gypsies has begun moving into a new one-storey apartment complex with its own clinic, kindergarten and meeting hall. Thailand’s ITV television network funded this project.

Indonesia, where the tsunami is feared to have killed 160,000 people, has yet to start building permanent homes. At least a third of the nearly 600,000 displaced survivors are living in squalid tent camps. Another 60,000-70,000 are in military-style barracks.

The rest are staying with friends and relatives, where five months after the calamity they are wearing out their welcome and drifting into the camps.

Kuntoro Mangasubroto, chairman of Indonesia’s reconstruction agency, complained bitterly about how slow lawmakers and bureaucrats in Jakarta have been to allocate money for the recovery. “They have no sense of urgency,” he fumed in an interview with Reuters.

But Fasnacht at Service International said it’s not all that unusual. The group, which has worked in Kosovo, also sent volunteers to Florida after four hurricanes hit the state in a matter of months last year.

“We’re still struggling to get permits to build homes there,” he said.

The Sri Lankan government is effectively outsourcing the recovery effort, leaving nearly $3 billion of pledged reconstruction aid in donor hands.

Its job is to provide the land, hand out permits and ensure building codes are met, said Mano Tittawella, chairman of the island’s reconstruction agency, in an interview.

Carlo Ratti, a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may pose a challenge to Sri Lankan building codes with his design for a “tsunami safe(r) house.

MIT’s sensible City Laboratory, in partnership with a Buddhist NGO, plans to build 1,000 of the houses, whose open design would not block the flow of water were another tsunami to hit.

Service International has put up 10 houses designed after a typical Sri Lankan village home and is building 10 more, after its local partner — Voice of New Life Without Drugs — managed to secure building permits from the provincial government.

They plan to keep doing that — with different groups of volunteers who pay their own airfare, food and lodging — for months.

“We eat the elephant one bite at a time,” said Fasnacht, a father of four from St. Louis.

Nilmini, a mother of three, is one of 40,000 Sri Lankan tsunami survivors still in tent camps, down from a half-million just after the disaster.

She’s hoping to get a cement block house and would be just as happy if it was far from the sea.

“I’m scared of the sea and my children are scared of the sea. They won’t go near it,” she said.

Various donors will build 55,000 houses for those like Nilmini, who lived by the beach. Rebuilding on the shore is now banned as a safeguard against any repeat tsunami.

Tittawella said he expects to have most of the displaced in permanent homes by early next year, although some experts think that this is too optimistic.

But Nilmini frets that after baking in her tent for so long, she will soon have to cope with a flooded camp now that the monsoon has started. Her husband, a barber before the calamity, is not working.

“I’m worried all the time and sad. I worry whether we’ll ever get a permanent house.”—Reuters