LARKANA, July 8: On the call of Sindh Abadgar Board a large number of people took out a procession on Wednesday to protestagainst the acute shortage of irrigation water in the command area of Saifullah Magsi branch.

People's Party Parliamentarians MNAs Ramesh Lal, Anwar Bhutto, Shahid Bhutto and SAB district president Ishaque Mughiri led the protest procession. The protesters started marching from Shahdadkot town and covered 70 kilometres in cars, jeeps, wagons and tractor trollies to reach the Garang regulator which serves as the distribution point of water between Sindh and Balochsitan provinces.

They staged a demonstration at the regular and chanted slogans against what they called an unjust water distribution. Speaking on the occasion, PPP MNAs, Ishaque Mughiri, Haroon Soomro, Khalid Khoso, Wajid Chandio, and others criticized the Sindh government for its tall claims of providing water to tail- end growers.

Terming it mere a lip-service, they said, at present 28 irrigation and water channels off-taking from the Saifullah Magsi branch and Shahdadkot branch were without water, how could the framers and small growers would cultivate their land.

These are just threats of the Sindh chief minister to pressurize irrigation officials and blackmail them, said Ishaque Mughiri. They feared massive shifting of the people from the area in case no water was released in these branches, saying that the people in the entire Shahdadkot taluka were forced to drink highly brackish water being supplied through the water supply scheme.

They held the superintendent engineer Saifullah Magsi branch solely responsible for the water shortage, accusing him of selling Sindh's water to Balochistan growers.

They alleged that around 40 illegal pipes had been inserted in the Saifullah Magsi branch and Balochistan was lifting water from them. They demanded that Sindh should be given its due share of 43 per cent.

They gave three days deadline to the government and said that if water was not released and superintendent engineer removed, they would stage a sit-in outside the office of the chief engineer, Sukkur.

MURDER: A villager, Maula Bakhsh Unnar, was killed by three armed men on the Pirsher road on Wednesday. The cause behind his murder was said to be an old enmity.