HYDERABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) parliamentary party leader in the Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Sheikh has observed that despite passage of one month, rainwater could not be drained out from various districts of lower Sindh.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari failed to explain how this rainwater would be disposed of, he said while speaking at a news conference at the local press club on Saturday.

He noted that only a few days back, a mentally impaired Kolhi girl drowned in a rainwater pond in the Shadi Palli area of Mirpurkhas; two young siblings drowned in another rainwater pond in Darya Khan Laghari village of Badin district and a 15-year-old youth drowned in a similar pond in Sujawal. He held the PPP-led government in Sindh responsible for the loss of lives and the trouble being faced by the people of Sindh due to its inability to cope with the situation.

Mr Sheikh said that Sindh government was getting billions of rupees and the PPP chairman had been spending millions of rupees on the fuel for his aircraft but he and the Sindh CM would keep blaming the federal government for doing nothing for Sindh.

He pointed out that influential landowners and community elders belonging to the PPP used to divert rain and floodwater towards villages of the poor to save their own lands.

He noted that thousands of acres of lands were still under rainwater in the Khipro taluka of Sanghar district.

“Today half of Sindh stays submerged under rainwater but nobody is mentioning [Sindh government’s responsibilities under the] 18th Constitutional Amendment,” he said, adding that it’s an irony that Vigos were being procured at a cost of Rs400m in the name of provision of relief to the flood-hit people.

He remarked that the Sindh police and administration were toeing the line of Sindh government.

Mr Sheikh said that most quantum of the gas produced in Sindh was being used in Sindh as Punjab used LNG.

In reply to a question, he said separation of Karachi from Sindh would undermine the country’s integrity; PTI did not believe in the division of Sindh.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2020