PM announced anti-sea intrusion project without getting feasibility done: Senator Palijo
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HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Senator Sassui Palijo has said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his recent visit to Sindh made announcement about building an embankment to check sea intrusion threatening several coastal districts, but a feasibility of the proposed project is yet to be undertaken.
She was speaking to reporters before attending the ‘Jashn-i-Ayaz’ programme at the Sindhi Language Authority (SLA) here on Saturday.
She recalled that the Senate had approved her resolution in October last year calling for the construction of a 250-kilometre embankment along the Sindh coastline. She said the resolution had suggested that the federal and Sindh governments should equally share the cost. It was on PML-N senators’ insistence during the debate that Senator Taj Haider, on behalf of the Sindh government, had agreed to share the cost, she added.
Senator Palijo said that this project should have been included in the ‘Vision 2025’ prepared by the ministry of planning and development. “But I had also proposed that besides building the embankment, adequate water flows downstream Kotri will have to be released to check sea intrusion and keep the Indus delta intact,” she said. She pointed out that the prime minister [during his visit to Sindh] did not discuss the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, water shortage in this province and, above all, the issue of census beginning this month.
She said Sindh was seriously concerned about census statistics, both relating to rural and urban parts of the province. She said that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) did not have equal representation of provinces; only one province was dominating it.
She said Sindh’s population was being assessed at 22 per cent although it could not be less than 26 per cent. She said census was a matter of life and death for Sindh.
Senator Palijo observed that even UN standards were not being maintained in census process in spite of the fact that the UN had written to the PBS in October last year that a pilot census should have been conducted first, which was not done. She said that smaller provinces have reservations because it is an exercise being carried out after 19 years.
Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2017
