BADIN: A large number of farmers and residents of coastal villages staged a 23-kilometre march on foot from Seerani town to Badin on Saturday to register protest against months-long water crisis, which had crippled routine life and devastated agriculture.

The protesters, after covering the distance in two hours, gathered outside Badin Press Club where they staged a demonstration and listened to their leaders’ speeches.

Syed Nawaz Shah Bhadai, Mohammad Bux Warar and other leaders of the Save Badin Action Committee, who led the march, told journalists that large-scale and unabated theft of water by influential persons through illegal waterways and flood canals was responsible for the worst water crisis and drought-like conditions in coastal areas.

They demanded fair distribution of water after dismantling diversions and blockages erected in canals to divert water flows to lands of influential persons and called for stern action against those who were involved in depriving them of their due share of water for the past nine months. They vowed to continue peaceful protest till their demands were met.

They said that they were compelled to drink highly contaminated water but the provincial government had kept a criminal silence over their plight. In spite of protests, sit-ins, hunger strikes and long marches no one was ready to take notice of an aggravating human tragedy, they said.

They appealed to Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the water crisis as the provincial government was not listening to their hue and cry.

Meanwhile, Grand Democratic Alliance’s parliamentary leader in Sindh Assembly Barrister Hasnain Mirza has urged Sindh government to immediately provide water to the protesting farmers and residents of coastal areas.

He told this reporter that continuous protests by farmers, traders and members of civil society were an indicator that peoples’ patience was fast wearing thin and they could now go to any length to get their due share of water.

“The water crisis has made conditions so pathetic that traders in more than 15 big and small towns voluntarily keep their shutters down to show solidarity with protesting farmers and growers of the district,” he said.

He said that Sindh government’s functionaries should read the writing on the wall and deplored that after finding no recourse to the worsening water crisis and callous and indifferent attitude of the officials concerned to their problems, people were forced to migrate to cities and other areas, leaving behind their hearths, homes and fertile lands.

He said that it was sheer injustice that blockages and diversions had been built in Akram Wah by spending a huge amount of Rs6 billion without taking farming community into confidence, probably because it had been done to divert their water.

He said that until and unless the blockages had been dismantled more than one million people living in four talukas of the district would never be able to get their share of water. It was cruel to release water into flood canals when there was not a drop of water in most of the tail-end areas and coastal belt, he said.

The GDA leader lashed out at Pakistan Peoples Party rulers for their failure to provide basic amenities of life to people. They were busy only in causing man-made disasters like water shortage in Badin and other areas because it served their interests, he said.

He warned officials of both Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority and irrigation department to stop watering lands of influential persons by diverting flows of canals to their lands and assured leaders of the Save Badin Action Committee of his full support in their struggle against what he termed banditry on their water share.

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2019