FOR a long time Balochistan has been suffering from food insecurity. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) provided data which estimates that 30 out of 32 districts in the province are food insecure — this is alarming. Shockingly, only two districts, Quetta and Jaffarabad, have food security in the entire province. Most of the districts depend on agriculture and it is the only source for food, but this sector is hurt owing to the shortage of water.

According to experts, over 80 per cent of agriculture is dependent on rain and for the last few years, there hasn’t been enough rainfall. There is also the issue of mismanagement of dams.

In Khuzdar, 350,000 cusecs of water was wasted and dumped through rivers into the Arabian Sea. In recent years, not a single large dam has been built in Balochistan to save the rain water. As a result, the water table is falling sharply. The agriculture land is dependent on water supplied by the tube wells which require electricity.

But rural areas get five to six hours of electricity in a day. How can people survive like this?

The most dangerous drought in Balochistan occurred during the period of 1997 to 2005. This killed over 1.76 million cattle and an area of 0.798 million hectares was wasted. I request the government to take action before the situation deteriorates further.

Sana Samad
Turbat

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2019