HYDERABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Hyderabad region president and former senator Sadaqat Ali Jatoi has demanded deployment of Rangers to ensure judicious distribution of water in Dadu district.

Addressing a press conference at the local press club on Sunday, he said the people of Johi taluka were not getting irrigation water despite adequate flows in Indus river. Dadu’s former district nazim Kareem Ali Jatoi and Ashiq Rodhani were also present.

Earlier, Mr Jatoi led a protest demonstration outside the local press club.

The PTI leader said the people of Johi were suffering for the past 12 years since the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) started ruling over Sindh. He said the situation was same right from Badin district to Dadu as far as water distribution was concerned. Dadu canal was a perennial channel of Sukkur Barrage which fed water to Johi branch, but there was no water in the channel, he regretted.

He said the so-called elected representatives were bent upon denying the people of Johi their right to live. Residents of the area had been protesting for the past two and a half months, they did not have access to water even for giving bath to their dead, he added.

They would have to fetch water from the area from where animals drink water, he said.

He appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan, army chief, DG Rangers and DG ISI to ensure that the people of Johi got irrigation water. He said that only the elected people from the ruling party were getting water for their lands.

He said PPP MNA Rafiq Jamali was the chairman of the Gorakh Hill Authority which had an annual allocation of Rs4bn, but nobody knew how that amount was spent.

The PPP wanted to enslave people, but he and other PTI fellows would resist their designs as they had been facing the PPP for the past 12 years, he said, adding that PPP’s opponents faced victimisation and false cases for not casting vote to the PPP.

He said Nai Gaj dam remained incomplete after it was started in the tenure of Liaquat Ali Jatoi when he was the federal water and power minister. Multinational companies were busy in oil and gas exploration in the area and elected representatives in getting money from them, he observed.

Had that money been spent in Johi taluka, the infrastructure would have been greatly improved, he said.

Kareem Jatoi said they would not leave people in the lurch come what may. He said the ruling party was using all kinds of tactics. No development works were carried out in the area by the present government after he completed his tenure as district nazim, he said.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2020