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KARACHI, Nov 13: The small but scenic fishermen’s village —Mubarak village — in Hawkesbay, bordering Balochistan, is without basic facilities, including water and electricity, despite the fact that it existed even before the British rule, a survey shows.
The 200-year-old village, 30km from Karachi city, with a population of more than 10,000 people, has a natural beauty because of the nearby sea and its mountainous terrain and has a great potential for tourism, but authorities never paid any heed to its development.
A majority of the population is Baloch, belonging to Sanghur, Sajdi and Mohammad Hasani tribes, who migrated to the area during the Talpur’s rule in Sindh from Makran, Ormara, Kalmat, Pasni and Gwadar. The original name of the village was Bangulow.
Most of the local people are involved in fisheries. The major economic activity in the village is fishing followed by construction and community, social, and personal services.
These neglected fishermen, whose forefathers had been living here for nearly 200 years, lack all basic amenities: they do not have any pier or jetty to offload their fish catch, nor they have access to clean water, education and health facilities.
ELECTRICITY: The village is without water and electricity facilities despite the fact that it is located near Kanupp and Pakistan Navy camp.
The villagers pointed out that they had submitted several applications with the KESC for the provision of electricity, but all in vain. The residents either get potable water through tankers from Karachi city or use contaminated water from ponds.
EDUCATION: There is one primary and a secondary school for boys that too without any proper facilities. Four years back, a girls primary school was also established and that has been without a female teacher.
The Government Secondary School in the village has been without teachers for the last six months and a primary schoolteacher has been teaching in the school.
The school has not received funds for 12 years and has been sustained through small contributions from the villagers. “We also have a girls school without teachers and funds, the building is on the verge of collapse,” said Mohammad Haroon. “The teachers assigned to our schools by the government are teaching somewhere in the city and drawing salaries in the name of the village schools,” he added.
JETTY: The residents claimed that for quite some time the land grabbers had been very active in the village and had been trying to create hurdles in the construction of a jetty and a link road between the village and the Sonera point.
As a result of the efforts of the villagers, the DCO, who was also the chairman of the defunct District Council, had approved a plan for a link road, while the chairman of the Fisherman’s Cooperative Society had also agreed to construct a jetty at the Sonera point.
After the approval of the budget and work order, the land grabbers had become active to sabotage these projects by fictitious claim of land ownership.
The villagers had appealed to the Sindh government to take notice of the activities of the land grabbers and issue immediate orders for the execution of the two vital projects.
But they did not pay any attention and the project has been pending till now.
One of the pressing demands of the residents is the construction of a jetty as most of the people survive on fishing for their livelihood. This fishermen’s village has been without a jetty for the last 53 years.
HEALTH: The village is still without any health care facilities and the residents have demanded the setting up of a maternity home in the area.
A dispensary was set up in the village in 1996, but it lacks proper medical facilities.
Despite persistent demand by the people, no medical officer has been appointed so far. There are, however, no arrangements for dealing with emergency cases, particularly maternity cases.
The villagers said in case of an emergency they had to take patients to hospitals in Karachi. In serious cases, they said, patients died on way to hospital. They demanded to include the proposed scheme in the poverty alleviation programme and to take steps for early construction of a maternity home in the area.
The prevalence of malaria, gastrointestinal and vaccine preventable diseases in the area indicates lack of preventive measures and an inefficient primary health care system.
This situation is particularly true for women. On the one hand the female population is culturally deprived of moving freely outside their house and always need some male member of the family to accompany them.
Malnutrition among women is a common phenomenon in Pakistan. This results in their poor health, leading to low-birth weight babies.
PROHIBITED NETS: The fishermen urged the government to put a ban on the use of destructive nets locally called Katra, Guja and Boola, at the creeks of the village’s coastal area, including Karachi. According to the fishermen, these nets have detrimental impacts on fisheries and cause growth overfishing due to the minute size of the holes, which trap sub-adults and juvenile forms disturbing the maturing cycle of the fish and shrimps. Apart from this, the Boola net creates pollution in the coastal waters of Sindh, they said, adding “the Sindh coast is already under serious over-exploitation has exacerbated growth overfishing.”
