MUZAFFARGARH: Fish farms on 2,800 acre land and 28,000 kilo fish from Jewana Bunglow to Alipur Tehsil were swept away by foods, said Assistant Director (Fisheries) Jam Saeed here on Thursday.

He said fish farmers in Muzaffargarh had to incur a loss of more than Rs1 billion and the government would announce compensation for them.

Fisheries department official Malik Akram said 6,000 acre land was being used for fish farming from Rangpur to Rohallanwali areas of Muzaffargarh district.

Fish farm owner Malik Saeed Gusara said he had spent millions and lost all to floodwater. He said he had bought feed on credit and one bag of feed was available for Rs1,300 in the market.

Rana Mubin, a feed factory owner, said he had given 200,000 bags of feed to fish farm owners on credit who had to pay him in November as per the contract. “Now my business is at stake after the flood.”

Talking to Dawn, Punjab Minister Iqbal Channar said: “It is my responsibility to give relief to fisheries owners.”

ROAD LINK: Road connection between Multan and Muzaffargarh will be restored within two or three days and rail link on Multan-Kashmore track in two weeks.

This was said by the provincial highway EXEN here on Thursday.

He said the department was reconstructing roads and plugging breaches on roads connecting Muaffargarh to Multan and Jhang.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shahbaz Shareef on Thursday visited Tehsil Alipur’s Basti Urla and Shehr Sultan and met flood-affected families in relief camps and directed his teams to compensate them.

On the occasion some families alleged that there was a lack of food, tents and water. The chief minister ordered Punjab Minister Iqbal Channar to provide them with all the items.

Shahbaz tasted the cooked food and ‘roti’ to check its quality while a number of people chanted slogans in favour of the chief minister and against Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri.

Talking to Dawn, PPP local leader Moazzam Jatoi alleged that the visit was planned and these people were not the flood-hit but health department workers who had been ordered to raise slogans against the opposition. He alleged that the PML-N government had failed to provide relief to the people.

This correspondent visited a relief camp and found no electricity, no charpoy, no mosquito net and no other facilities like washrooms.

A flood victim, Ghulam Husain, said the officials served them with dry food items and chicken ‘qorma’ during VVIPs’ visit otherwise they were given ‘Daal chawal’ or beef.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2014