KARACHI, Sept 4: Addressing a news conference in his chambers on Thursday, Leader of the Opposition Nisar Khuhro chided the government for not pressing for a halt to the construction of the Greater Thal Canal as envisaged in the joint resolution adopted by the Sindh Assembly on February 28.
He also released a copy of the letter which Imtiaz Kazi, Secretary to the government of Sindh, had written to the Secretary of the Cabinet Division on April 7 requesting that the resolution may be placed before the CCI for consideration to stop the construction and redress grievances of the province.
He said that the treasury benches were trying to evade any discussion on the subject though they were equal partners in the passage of the resolution.
Referring to Senior Minister Syed Sardar Ahmad’s statement, Mr Khuhro said that the provincial government would take the resolution of Thal canal to the CCI after it was constituted. In the meantime, construction of Thal Canal in violation of the Water Accord and the Constitution is proceeding at full speed.
He regretted that the government was adopting evasive measures and exerting pressure on the Speaker. He said the opposition was going to every nook and corner of the province to mobilize masses against the canal project.
They are holding strikes, protests, demonstrations all over the province. Many had been arrested when the campaign was launched, he added.
Mr Khuhro pointed out that his counterpart in the Punjab Assembly, Mr Qasim Zia, President of PPP Punjab, took a bold stand against the project on the floor of the Punjab Assembly. He made it clear that the people of Punjab did not support the project and that it was only for the benefit of high-ranking military officers that the canal was being constructed.
While the opposition in Sindh is working on so many options, what options, except for waiting for the CCI to be constituted, has the government thought of? What makes the provincial government think that the construction of the GTC would stop even after a CCI decision? he asked.
He was of the view that the government was merely covering up its tacit support for the project on the pretext of taking it to the CCI as and when the CCI was constituted.
Mr Khuhro further asked: “What has the MQM, a major stakeholder in the coalition, done to get the canal construction stopped? Why did not they make it a precondition to their joining the government? Why don’t they come and sit in the opposition if the federal government has not stopped work on the canal even after six months of the unanimous resolution adopted by the assembly? Why don’t they join the street protest?”
He said that there should be no ambiguity about the Greater Thal Canal. Sindh is opposed to the Kalabagh not because it is opposed to the generation of electricity or building storage to contain high floods, but because canals for irrigation were being taken out of the Kalabagh dam.
He said that Sindh fully supported the Ghazi Barotha project, which would generate 1,300 MW of electricity and would store more than 2MAF of water in its 56-km-long channel. It is opposed to the GTC because it is an irrigation project which diverts the Indus waters, he said.
He said that Gen Musharraf had started implementation of the irrigation part of the Kalabagh dam in the shape of GTC “which is a matter of life and death for our agriculture.”