BADIN: The floodwaters from the breach in LBOD, which developed on Aug 29 but the area people believed it was manmade, are fast moving towards Pangrio, main town of Badin district after inundating several hundred small and big villages and destroying their homes and farmland.
The breach could not be plugged despite joint efforts made by irrigation department and district administration and the saline water of the drain had so far destroyed the area in around 15 kilometres radius.
Sources in the area said that labourers working on plugging the breach had reportedly stopped the work and removed machinery from the site.
Badin deputy commissioner Agha Shahnawaz Khan said that he had convened a meeting with senior citizens of Pangrio town which decided that work on protection dyke along bypass road and grid station was being started immediately and the district administration had provided excavator machines for the purpose.
The LBOD, which was originally planned to help reclaim 1.3 million acres of land in Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpurkhas districts, carried saline water to the sea but its faulty design had so far inundates hundreds of villages in Badin district and forced them to evacuate.
The residents of Badin and Tharparkar complained that the LBOD was harmful for them though it had proved to be a blessing for the people of Nawabshah and other districts in upper Sindh.
They said the main function of the drain was to drain out saline water but it was being used to carry unused freshwater of agricultural lands irrigated by Sukkur barrage, which raised the drain’s level beyond its capacity.
The Tharparkar and Badin’s district had planned to breach the drain at Zero Point to reduce pressure but they had to quit the plans following protest by villagers.
Flood victims loot tents
In Pangrio, flood victims’ patience ran out as they stormed the government camp office set up the camp office in a marriage hall and took away 15 tents.
The Tando Bago assistant commissioner said that the process of distribution of relief goods had been initiated.
However, the victims had used these tents as their shelters, he said.
Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2022
