THATTA, Sept 23 Vehicular traffic on the Thatta-Badin highway, Sujawal-Jati Link road and Thatta-Belo link roads was restored on Thursday after a halt to discharge of floodwaters from a breach in Molchand-Surjani dyke at Kot Almo.
The floodwater stopped after a conventional mangli (dowel) was raised along the breach site.
The breach occurred on Aug 26 and soon widened to over 1,000 feet within a few days, releasing about 150,000 cusecs of water into four talukas on the left bank of the river and flooding the highway and almost all link roads.
Chief Engineer (irrigation) of Kotri Barrage Manzoor Ali Shaikh said that water had completely stopped discharging through the breach. The site would be plugged completely within next two to three days, he said.
He said that the next task was to restore damaged infrastructure of Lower Pinyari subdivision and drain out water from as many areas as possible to enable growers to sow Rabbi crops in the tail end district.
PPP MPA Humera Alwani said that according to a preliminary official survey, 335 kilometre long roads, 972 school units, 19 health facilities including rural health centres and basic health units, 17 water supply and sanitation schemes and 1.2 million acres of agricultural land had been damaged by floods in the district.
She said that the figure of destroyed agricultural fields included standing crops of banana, paddy, sugarcane, cotton, orchards and coconut spread over 150,000 acres on the left bank and 375,000 acres in the command area of Lower Pinyari subdivision on the right bank of the Indus in addition to land in Thatta coastline.
She suggested incentives, subsidies, waiver of agricultural and other loans, including domestic utility bills etc and declaring entire district as calamity stricken area.
Meanwhile, displaced persons have gradually started returning to their areas and there is a marked decline in their numbers at Makli, which had become junction of DPs during floods.
The displaced families interviewed by this correspondent said that some male members of their families were routinely going back to their villages to collect belongings from their houses and then getting back to the camps to get food and shelter as well as queue up for hours altogether to obtain token for Watan cards. Meanwhile, the director of China International Water and Electric Corporation Sindh Region, Feng Yung Tai, accompanied by the corporation's Sindh coordinator Imtiaz Ali Jat and his team visited China Hospital set up for IDPs at Makli.
