DERA GHAZI KHAN, May 8: A large number of people affected by the World Bank-funded Taunsa Barrage Rehabilitation and Modernisation Project (TBRMP) held a protest demonstration at the resettlement site of the project. The rally was taken out during the visit of a World Bank delegation and demanded an immediate halt to the project and appropriate compensation for the affected people, including allotment of all available state land in the area.

Carrying banners, protesters raised slogans condemning the contract system in fishing, construction of a big dam on the Indus River and the highhandedness of the World Bank, irrigation department and the local administration.

Initially, protesters were prevented from meeting the World Bank mission by a heavy police contingent. Later, they forced their way to where the delegation had arrived and started their protest.

Delegation members, including the WB country director John Wall, were accompanied by the project chief engineer from the irrigation department and representatives of an engineering consulting firm.

The delegation was unable to satisfy protesters and its meek claims that grievances of the affected people would be redressed were rejected by them, who demanded immediate action.

Manzoor Sheikh, Anwar Bibi, Shamim Bibi, Talib Sarai and Anwar Chandio of the Sindhoo Bachao Tarla said the meagre compensation offered to the fishermen community displaced from the barrage area ranged only from Rs16,000 to Rs40,000. They claimed that many of those displaced had still not received the compensation.

While thousands of other local communities, including those residing on the left bank, have suffered a heavy loss of livelihood owing to the water course diversion during the project construction that also caused a massive ecological degradation.

Other major project-related problems are deforestation, massive increase in noise and air pollution and degradation of land, crops, fish farms and fruit trees in Mouzas Bait Qaimwala and Loonwala.

Fazle Rab and Zafar Lund of the SBT and Aasim Sajjad of the People’s Rights Movement (PRM) said the government had undertaken countless such projects with the support of the WB in the past which had badly damaged local eco-systems.

They said the people of the Seraiki belt and other affected regions had decided to resist this ‘development’. Demonstrators, who dispersed peacefully later, pledged that a Sindh Sagar Sath would be organised by the end of June to decide about the civil disobedience.