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| July 3, 2005 | Sunday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 25, 1426 |
Plea to release flood waters for lower Sindh
HYDERABAD, July 2: The Sindh Abadgar Board has demanded that flood waters in upper parts of the country should immediately be released for lower Sindh where Kharif crops have been dried up due to water shortage.
At a meeting held here on Saturday, the working committee of the board said on the one hand there was a flood-like situation at upstream barrages while on the other hand water rotation programme was being implemented in canals off-taking from the Kotri barrage.
SAB president Abdul Majeed Nizamani presided over the meeting.
The meeting demanded that farmers of the Kotri barrage should be exempted from payment of water tax and other taxes because they had sustained tremendous losses due to acute shortage of water and rotation programme.
The meeting said there was rampant lawlessness in Sindh due to unjust distribution of water during the last five years and discharge of poisonous water by other provinces into Sindh.
It claimed that water-logging, wrong designing of the drainage system and indifferent attitude of the Sindh government and sugar mills, the agriculture sector of Sindh had suffered losses to the tune of billions of rupees.
The board demanded that the growers should be compensated for the losses and funds should be released immediately for the rehabilitation of the entire irrigation system.
The meeting demanded that all the watercourses of Sindh should be lined and bulldozers and laser-levelling machines should be provided to the farming community at subsidised rates.
Expressing concern over the expected super flood, the board called upon the irrigation department to carry out round the clock patrolling on both sides of the Indus River right from the Guddu barrage to the Thatta-Sujawal bridge.
It proposed that excavation of water channels should be done in consultation with the growers.
It criticized the unreasonable increase in the prices of petrol and demanded that prices of oil should be reduced and farmers should be given concession on diesel for tractors.
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