HYDERABAD, Sept 28: Activists of various NGOs and affected people of the Manchar lake, Chotiari, LBOD and RBOD held a protest demonstration outside a local hotel where an international workshop on water and drainage was being held.

They were led by Jami Chandio of the Pakistan Network for Rivers, Dams and People, Ismail Khaskheli of the Awami Tehrik, Sindhiani Tehrik leader Nazeer Qureshi and others.

Raising slogans against water schemes, the protesters blocked the road facing the hotel where a workshop on "Integrated Drainage Development and Water Management", jointly organized by the Water and Power Development Authority, National Drainage Programme, Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Agency and the World Bank, was being held.

They handed a memorandum to the international panel of experts, holding a discussion on the Drainage Master Plan, saying that a plan was being prepared to carry poisonous and polluted water of three provinces and discharge it into the sea.

Rejecting the DMP, the memorandum demanded that the World Bank should get compensation from the Wapda for destroying the sources of livelihood of many people, and added that the Wapda must accept responsibility for committing crimes against the people and pay compensation for destroying the environment as well as livelihood of farmers, and also rectify defects in the drainage projects executed in the province.

The Wapda had organized the workshop to receive billions of rupees from the World Bank by suggesting that Sindh had been consulted on the DMP, when the truth was that it would destroy Sindh economically, socially and environmentally, it claimed.