THARPARKAR is a poor district situated in Pakistan’s southeast. It is the 18th largest desert in the world and contains the world’s seventh largest coal reserve, but the Human Development Index here is 0.227 – the lowest in Sindh.

Not only does the HDI need attention, the people of Thar need attention as they have already suffered a lot owing to the draught.

These people do not have basic facilities such as access to education or healthcase, clean drinking water, etc.

A local NGO claimed that most children do not attend school as they have to go to a town nearly 10km away to fetch water for the family daily.

It is time the people of Thar got what they deserved and require to live a good life. How long are they supposed to go on like this?

They want the same rights and necessities as are being provided to people in other districts of this province.

Despite all these problems, Thar contributes around 660MV of electricity to the country and gets nothing in return.

It is sad to note that some villages here don’t even have electricity, even though a recent report I read claimed that Thar only needs 5MW of electricity in total.

Murtaza Samejo
Hyderabad

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2019