PESHAWAR: Things are topsy-turvy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where a charity organisation’s offer to finance the early warning system for disaster-prone Peshawar district was turned down by the city district nazim feeling the ‘sustainability and maintenance’ of the equipment will be an issue.

As if unaware of his duty as the caretaker of around four million people of the provincial capital affected in all weathers by disasters, nazim Mohammad Asim didn’t accept the offer of the Al-Khidmat Foundation to install an early warning system as he was unable to work out modalities for the purpose.

During a group discussion on ‘multiple hazards vulnerability and risk assessment of Peshawar district’ here on Wednesday, the charity organisation said it would install early warning system if the district government provided land for it.

The Al-Khidmat Foundation and Riphah University jointly organised the event, which was attended by academicians and officials of the relevant departments.

Costing around Rs30 million, the early warning system requires one kanals of land. However, the Peshawar nazim opted not to accept the offer on the pretext that sustainability and maintenance of the equipment would be an issue and that it needed further consultation.

Insists equipment’s maintenance will be an ‘issue’

“The question is who will operate and maintain the system in future,” he said, adding that the provision of land for the installation of the system was not an issue.

Though prone to multiple disasters, including flash floods, riverine and urban flooding, Peshawar doesn’t have an early warning system for them.

Earlier, Dr Attaur Rehman, who teaches at the Department of Geography, University of Peshawar, said the rapid and unplanned urbanisation would swallow the entire agricultural land of Peshawar district in the next 50 years.

“There is a need for a specific legislation to immediately stop the conversion of agricultural land into residential and commercial areas in Peshawar district otherwise there will be no farmland left in the next 50 years,” he said.

The data collected by the revenue department show that the rapid urbanisation and unplanned construction have swallowed more than 3,307 acres of agricultural land in Peshawar district over the last one and a half decade.

According to it, the total agricultural land in the provincial capital was 109,883 acres in 2001-02 but that shrank to 106,576 acres in 2013-14.

The agricultural land is also under pressure in the adjoining districts of Nowshera and Charsadda due to the unplanned urbanisation.

The government has yet to legislate on how to regulate utilisation of land and stop conversion of farmlands into commercial activities.

Dr Rehman said Peshawar was among the top districts exposed to the multiple manmade and natural disasters as it didn’t have any system to forecast nullah flooding.

He said the national warning system didn’t cover streams and seasonal nullahs of Peshawar, which saw devastations caused by urban and riverine floods every year.

Khan Zeb, an official of the Water and Sanitation Services Peshawar, said the situation was deteriorating due to non-implementation of the building bylaws in the district.

He called for the implementation of the relevant laws to prevent urban flooding in the capital.

The official said the level of groundwater in the district was also going down.

A joint declaration issued after the discussion said the environmental degradation and climate change had increased the likelihood and intensity of natural hazards in Peshawar and other parts of the country.

It demanded one per cent budget allocation for climate change adaptation in the next financial year and the use of 50 per cent of it for mapping and assessment related research and development.

The declaration suggested that all projects related to the proposed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor include prior environmental assessments and hazard mapping in line with the NDMA’s National DRR Policy 2013 with the effective DRR plans on all CPEC routes.

It called for the establishment of independent district disaster management units fully equipped with trained people and autonomous in implementing the guidelines in all 105 districts of the country.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2017