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HYDERABAD, Nov 22: The Rajuni Ittehad (People's Alliance) of Tando Alam Mari, Hyderabad taluka, has threatened to take out a procession from the area to the Hyderabad Press Club on November 27 if the OGDC failed to provide jobs and other facilities to the local people.
Speaking at a news conference at the press club here on Monday, the leaders of the Ittehad, Mohammad Allafi Khoso and others, said that the Tando Alam oil field was the biggest one in the entire country and produced 16,000 barrels of oil valued at Rs40 million in the international market on daily basis.
However, they regretted that the local population was not only denied jobs in the oil field but also other facilities which the Oil and Gas Development Corporation was bound to provide.
They said that the people and livestock consumed brackish water as a result they suffered from disease. They added that the roads were damaged and the people did not have any health and education facility.
The leaders of the alliance said that the OGDC had laid the foundation stone of a school as far bask as 1995 but had not constructed it. They said that a 'public' dispensary remained open only for eight hours and the doctors there provided health cover to the OGDC employees only.
They said that the company had purchased land for a refinery but only its boundary wall had been raised and the remaining work had been stopped. They said that the company paid Rs60,000 per tanker for the transportation of oil to the Rawalpindi refinery.
They demanded that the local people should be given priority in jobs, fresh water should be provided to the villagers, boys and girls schools should be constructed and an oil refinery should be set up at Tando Alam Mari.
They further demanded that a hospital with a hepatitis centre and a maternity home should be constructed which should be fully equipped with x-ray machine, laboratory and ambulance service.
DEMO: Displaced Sindhi families of the 1988-90 ethnic riots held a demonstration outside the press club here on Monday to protest against the rehabilitation of people of Oad community on the land earmarked for them.
Speaking on the occasion, woman councillor Shamim Chandio, Jehangir Subhpoto and others said that while 600 displaced families still awaited their rehabilitation, the families of the Oad community were being rehabilitated on the land. After two blasts on the rail track, the people who have encroached upon the railway land are being ejected and resettled in Sehrish Nagar.
