HYDERABAD, Nov 17: At least 700,000 acres of land in Tharparkar district, having potential agricultural and other productive purposes, are being treated as enemy property while hundreds of thousands of peasants are landless in the area.

The lands were either abandoned during the wars in 1965 and 1971 or were captured by the Pakistani armed forces during the same wars.

This was stated during a meeting of the Servants of Sindh Society (SSS) in a meeting held at the residence of Ali Ahmed Qureshi the other day. The meeting was presided over by Sirajul Haq Memon.

The participants of the meeting were of the view that there was no reason why these lands should not be distributed among the poor landless people residing in the district.

They demanded of the government that the people, who were facing eviction in the face of coal exploration and development project, should be settled in the adjacent areas besides being provided job opportunities.

The SSS expressed its concern over the alarming rise in the incidents of kidnappings, tribal feuds, murders, including murder under the garb of Karo-kari.

The participants of the meeting were unanimous in their views that these tragic happenings had deeply affected the social, economic and cultural environment of Sindh.

They urged all components of the Sindhi society, specially the educated youth and tribal leadership to play their due role and rid the society of these evils.

The members of the society also urged the authorities in Sindh to help maintain peace and ensure provision of justice in the province besides creating awareness against all such anti-social elements and happenings, which according to them, tarnish the image of Sindh and its decent and peace-loving people.

Voicing their dismay over the slow and uneven development in Sindh, the meeting recalled that not more than 50 per cent of the development budget could be spent in the province during the year 2000-2001.

Stressing on the urgent need for creating job opportunities, the participants of the meeting observed that no large-scale development projects had been undertaken, which could have helped in generating employment opportunities for the youths of Sindh, who were driven to commit suicide out of desperation arising out of joblessness.

It appealed the federal and the provincial governments to start development projects in all the districts besides ensuring that no development funds were allowed to lapse.

Rejecting the importance being given to English and Urdu by the government, the meeting opined that these languages were bound to threaten the very survival of the native languages in the country.

Sindhi, they said, was the recognized and in-use educational language of the Sindhi people upto intermediate level in the pre- independence era.

Warning the patriotic and culturally-conscious people of Sindh to take notice of the designs targeting their very identity as a people of Pakistan.

Expressing its dismay, the members of the society pointed out that well-printed and costly sets of English textbooks had already been distributed free of cost in the primary schools throughout Sindh.