MITHI: Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah has expressed frustration over performance of the many non-governmental organisations purportedly working on nutrition in Thar and said their work has been completely “unsatisfactory” for the past many years.

The only solution to recurring droughts and subsequent deaths of children and mass migration of Tharis was framing of long-term policies and implementing them in letter and spirit, he said during a visit to Mithi Civil Hospital here on Wednesday.

He said the Sindh government had planned a mega scheme for tackling malnutrition and its complications commonly found in the desert region since it was one of the major problems confronting Thar.

Mr Shah, who arrived in Thar on a two-day visit along with senior officials of different departments, expressed his grief over unabated deaths of children in Thar and said there was still much to be done to save lives of infants and pregnant women.

He ordered health officials to make all-out efforts to provide quality healthcare to patients and free ambulance service to the serious ones to help shift them to teaching hospitals in Karachi and Hyderabad. “I will not tolerate refusal [of] free service to patients,” he warned.

He said that he would take up the issue of construction of a modern hospital for children in Mithi with the chief minister and asked members of civil society to discourage the practice of underage marriages, which was also one of the reasons behind maternal and infant deaths.

He said the Sindh government had directed heads of medical universities to send doctors to Thar and a number of teams were already working in Thar to provide best healthcare facilities to people.

He announced distributing fodder among Tharis for their starving livestock and said the process of distribution would start within next few days. “Tharis leave their homes only after they find no fodder and water for their cattle and we are ensuring that water is supplied to all Thar areas with all available means including canal water and reverse osmosis plants,” he said.

Mr Shah said that payment to the private firm, which ran the RO plants, would be made within next few days. It was very painful to see Thari women walking several miles on foot in search of water, he said, adding that he would summon irrigation officials and order them to release water into the only channel of the desert region, the Rann Minor.

He took notice of forced revenue collection from weekly cattle markets in Thar towns and directed the deputy commissioner to immediately stop the practice and keep it suspended as long as drought conditions prevailed in Thar.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2018

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