HYDERABAD, July 31: Writers, intellectual and leaders of public opinion have expressed their sympathy at the plight of people of Sindh and Balochistan after rains and flash floods which destroyed their source of livelihood bringing them into open with hardly anything for their survival.

They showed concern over the government apathy by not taking measures to mitigate the suffering of people displaced by floods instead of engaging itself in other things.

The views were shared in an interactive conference organised by the Awami Tehreek at the Hyderabad Press Club on Monday on “Flood disaster in Sindh and Balochistan: Where is the government?”

The AT leader Ayaz Latif Palijo informed the gathering that about one million people had been directly hit while five million indirectly. The Balochistan government had exempted growers from land revenue and water dues with the Sindh announcing only Rs15,000 for each affected family he said calling it a great injustice to people who lost everything including household items and cattle in the catastrophe.

The government had abundant of resources to launch military operation but nothing to hand out to needy he alleged adding that as per information whatever had been allocated was being distributed by waderas among their favourites. He lamented the attitude of those influential men who made slits in Sim Nullah embankments to save their properties.

The JUI Senator Khalid Mehmood Soomro said the government’s announcement of a meagre Rs15,000 per family was a cruel joke with those who lost everything and living on roads and embankments without even a tented roof over their heads.

Though the flood was of not a great magnitude but the slits formed at gunpoint in drains and channels made conditions worst than the calamity of a greater scale he said and demanded relief for effectees on war-footing as their rehabilitation will take many years. Jamat-i-Islami leader Mumtaz Memon and others also spoke on the occasion.