HYDERABAD, April 27: Rail traffic at the Hyderabad section was disrupted for several hours on Saturday when participants in a long march that set off from Badin on April 22 held a sit-in on the tracks in Latifabad to press the government ensure adequate supply of drinking and irrigation water to the tail-end areas of Badin district.

The long march by farmers was organised by the Sindh Abadgar Tanzeem and led by Fayyaz Shah Rashdi, Attaullah Shah and Tariq Arain.

According to railway sources, seven up and down trains were stranded at Hyderabad, Kotri, Bholari and Jungshahi stations during the course of the sit-in. Thousands of passengers traveling in the trains had to endure exhausting conditions and uncertain situation waiting for resumption of their journey.

“We had to suspend the rail traffic at 4.45pm after the track was blocked at the Latifabad railway crossing,” said a railway official. He said four of the affected trains were bound for Karachi and the other three for Peshawar, Lahore and Faisalabad.

The participants, mostly belonging to the Khairpur Gamboh sub-division of the Sukkur barrage, demanded removal of illegal direct outlets (DOs) from canals which, they said, were depriving tail-end growers of their due share in water.

Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) president Abdul Majeed Nizamani and Sindh Democratic Forum leader Zulfikar Halepoto joined in the sit-in.

Speaking to the protesters, Mr Nizamani said that the Irrigation Act prohibited direct outlets from irrigation canals, adding that the culture of DOs cropped up in the ’70s. Countless DOs had since been issued, he said, adding that tail gauges had been dismantled across the province. Had these been properly maintained, water availability would have been ensured, he said.

Moreover, water from one canal system was now being given to the other one also in violation of the relevant laws and even supporting channels were being designed, he observed.

The SAB chief said that yet another illegal practice in vogue was transfer of water commanded area to some non-commanded area.

Leaders of the protesting farmers said that their area had not been receiving water for seven to eight months and the result that water distributaries including Jarkas, Khoski, Sanghi Pharu and Aliabad were lying dry. They said that the Khairpur Gamboh irrigation sub-division was located in the Naseer division of the Rohri circle in the Sukkur barrage command area.

They said that unavailability of water had created a drought-like situation in their area and farmer families had started migrating to some other areas.They claimed that around 250,000 acres of land was vulnerable to drought due to unavailability of water. They said that DOs were the primary factor leading to the situation.

They claimed that the people who were granted permission to have direct outlets happened to be part of government. They said that the irrigation authorities remained least concerned about the plight of tail-end growers.

They said that even drinking water was not available in their areas.