THATTA: Leaders of public opinion and civil society have urged the government to formulate an all-inclusive drought mitigation policy that caters to all arid regions of the province including Thar, Nara, Kohistan and Kacho and not confine it to only one particular area.

Responding to the recent report about a draft policy having been prepared for approval from the provincial assembly, they praised the efforts made by the Sindh government’s 21-member committee and the Thar Development Authority in this regard but stressed that both the initiatives should be synergised and the scope of the authority should be extended to all arid regions instead of focusing on one specific geographic area.

Nasir Ali Panhwar, executive director of the Centre for Environment and Development, said that public was seldom consulted while formulating policies that ultimately affected that same public.

Though the government had lately started involving stakeholders in formulating public policies because of pressure of donors and media, he said

He said the arid zones of Sindh represented 17 per cent of the arid land of Pakistan and were classified as subtropical deserts. They covered an area of over 68,000 sq kms of the province, divided into three even sized distinct regions of Thar, Nara and Kohistan, he said.

He said the policy should be devised through consultative process so that it might reflect the needs and aspirations of the people living in all arid regions of the province.

The chairman of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Mohammad Ali Shah, called for extensive public consultation on drought policy before presenting it in Sindh Assembly. It would give ownership to the policy at a wider scale and stakeholders concerned could provide their input to further enrich the policy, he said.

He said the drought could not only hit rain-fed areas but also the riverine zone. Therefore, wherever it occurred in the province it should be mitigated under a wider policy and should be titled as provincial drought mitigation policy.

Obhayo Khan Khushk, a former technocrat and now a known environmentalist, said the drought was linked with water and the policy should include the right to food and the right to water for people.

Dr Mohammad Ali Manjhi, a writer and columnist, argued the drought mitigation policy should not be of discriminatory kind it should be beneficial for the entire population living in various droughts-hit areas of the province.

He said that nowadays the tail-end areas of Thatta, Badin and Sujawal districts faced drought-like conditions. The policy, therefore, should be made in such a way that it must be beneficial for all areas and not for a particular area of the province.

The Kohistan region covers 23,000 sq km and occupies four per cent of the total landmass of the province, consisting of parts of Thatta, Jamshoro, Dadu, Qambar- Shahdadkot districts.

Thar is located in Tharparkar and Umerkot districts, Nara in Sanghar and Khairpur districts and Kacho in Dadu and Qambar-Shahdadkot districts.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2014