KARACHI: Over 470 people, 300 children among them, have died and about 10,000 animals perished because of recent drought in Tharparker district of Sindh.

This was stated in a report prepared by the provincial Minister for Prisons, Enquiries and Anti-Corruption, Manzoor Hussain Wasan. The assignment was given to him by PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari. The report held officials of various departments responsible for the tragedy.

Soon after the report was released to the media on Thursday, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari issued show cause notices to PPP’s Sindh President and Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah and Manzoor Wasan, who is also the party’s provincial Deputy General Secretary, over the mishandling of the situation in Thar and asked them to submit their replies.

A spokesman for Bilawal House, Aijaz Durrani, rejected the report, terming it immature and too early to assess the real situation in Thar. He claimed that Bilawal Bhutto was personally monitoring the situation and investigation was also under process.

According to the report, Mr Wasan paid a visit to Thar last month and held meetings with officials and local people before preparing the report. He has recommended action against the district administration, health, livestock and food departments, the provincial Disaster Management Authority, the relief commissioner and the finance department.

According to the report, 380,000 wheat bags were provided for free distribution among the affected people while over Rs50 million was given to the district health officer and Rs200m to former secretary Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal to purchase fodder for animals.

There are 110 dispensaries and one casualty centre, trauma centre and maternity home each in the district, but none of them was found functional. ORS packets found in the dispensaries had expired.

The Mithi Civil Hospital and a children hospital have better facilities, but they are insufficient to meet the large number of patients, especially women and children. Patients are being referred to hospitals in Hyderabad and Karachi because of non-availability of child specialist and gynaecologist.

According to sources, five fully equipped mobile medical dispensaries worth Rs250 million imported from Japan have been handed over to the health department, but these are being misused. One is under the use of the Tharparker DCO as an air-conditioned car and another is in the farmhouse of Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon. Two dispensaries have been handed over to Chhor Cantonment and one is under the use of Mithi Civil Hospital.

The report said Thar had been facing drought since 2012 and if health units, mobile medical dispensaries and other medical centres had been functional, the casualties could have been contained.

“The promises made by the chief minister to build nursing school/college, pay compensation to the heirs of those killed, appoint doctors, including gynaecologists and child specialists, and to double the salary of those doctors who work in Tharparker have not been fulfilled. This has created a lot of problems to defend the government,” the report adds.

According to the livestock department, the number of livestock in Thar was 6.5 million, but only 700,000 of them have been vaccinated. An amount of Rs50m provided for vaccination, medicines and other facilities was reportedly misappropriated by assistant directors Naubat Khoso and Dr Madan Lal Malhi, the report alleged. They were earlier suspended for negligence of duty and corruption, but reinstated and posted in Mirpurkhas.

The Mithi deputy commissioner was given 21,000 bottles of mineral water by the PDMA, NDMA and deputy commissioners of Hyderabad and Korangi, but only 9,000 of them were distributed among the affected people. Most of the bottles were of expired dates.

The report said the livestock department had failed to establish even a single veterinary hospital despite having received huge budget. About 232 veterinary dispensaries and centres were required to be built after the 2012 drought.

The chief minister has also promised to build a veterinary college in Tharparker and pay compensation to those who lost their animals, but this promise is yet to be fulfilled.

Manzoor Wasan suggested that in order to maintain transparency, a third party survey in collaboration with Nadra be conducted and ration card on the pattern of Watan Card be issued to every family.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2014