BADIN: Businessmen, traders and shopkeepers of Malkani Sharif town observed a complete shutdown on Monday to express solidarity with growers agitating against unavailability of irrigation water for several months.

A large number of growers took out a rally and held a sit-in on a section of Pangrio-Jhudo Road in the town for five hours. They kept raising slogans against the irrigation department and other authorities for not paying any attention to their woes.

Speaking to local reporters, the protesters said thousands of people of this area depended on farming to earn their livelihood but unavailability of water for many months had created a crisis-like situation across this part of the province.

Representing the protesters, Pir Fayyaz Hussain Rashidi, Tariq Mehmood Arain, Lutuf Malkani and others belonging to various organisations of growers including the Sindh Abadgar Tanzeem (SAT) described the situation as “an artificial crisis caused by irrigation officials and other functionaries of the government”.

They said water was not being released into the channels of Khairpur Gumbo subdivision. They condemned the government for not even complying with the Supreme Court order given in favour of affected growers, who had waged a years-long struggle for water supply.

They said they had moved the apex court to plead that their share was being stolen by influential landowners through tampered modules in connivance with the local irrigation officials.

Leaders of the town’s businessmen and traders said they shared the concern with growers because the situation was directly and indirectly affecting the overall economy of the area and buying power of the local population.

The business activities in this town had declined to the extent that businessmen, traders and shopkeepers had started shifting to other areas in quest of livelihood, they said.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2017