HYDERABAD, March 22: The Sindh Water Committee appointed in the water and agriculture conference organized by Awami Tehrik on March 17 held a meeting here on Thursday to deliberate over the decisions taken by the president’s secretariat regarding water of Indus River System.
The meeting rejected the decisions, the main purpose of which, according to it, appeared to be to remove the illegalities committed in the process of the approval of the Thal canal project.
It maintained that the secret start of work on the controversial canal was the latest act of state economic terrorism.
The committee recalled that 150 years long cruel plunder of Sindh’s share of Indus waters included criminal acts like the Jullandar conspiracy, brushing aside the 1945 Sindh-Punjab agreement, the secret anti-Sindh deal in 1948 with Indian East Punjab authorities, ex-party imposition of Indus Water Treaty in 1961 behind the back of Sindh, misappropriation of the foreign loan of billions of rupees and turning of replacement Mangla Dam into a development dam, imposition of Tarbela Dam and two links on Indus against the advice of the World Bank and violation of the condition of restructured and conditional uses of the above links.
The Greater Thal Canal Project, the committee pointed out, stood rejected by the people of Sindh as illegal, unconstitutional, immoral and a step towards pushing the people of the province against the wall.
In the opinion of the committee, clause 14B of the anti-Sindh 1991 Water Accord unjustly imposed by the then central government through its puppet government of Sindh, was clear and did not need a judicial interpretation.
It demanded that the greater Thal canal project should therefore be immediately cancelled and the 5km illegally dug up canal be filled.
The committee also demanded that an inquiry should be conducted as to why the illegal and anti-Sindh Rs30 billion project was approved by federal forums like the CDWP, Ecnec and Wapda without completing the formalities behind the back of the people of Sindh.
It also demanded that the federal government officials involved should be punished.
The committee felt that the Sindh government had failed to protect the rights of the people of Sindh.
It pointed out that it was the same government which gave away Rs15 billion of Sindh’s money to Wapda when Justice Shafi-ur- Rehman had already decided that Sindh did not have to pay the same.
It was the same government which paid the heavily indebted Sindh’s Rs8 billion for costly wheat to benefit the producers of bumper wheat crop of Punjab.
The water committee called upon democratic forces of Pakistan and the world community to come to the rescue of the beleaguered people of Sindh, whose basic human rights to livelihood were threatened and historical rights undermined.
It also called upon the people of Sindh to unite, organise and rise for waging a peaceful, democratic struggle for the recovery of their plundered rights and for saving Sindh from economic collapse through water famine and consequent devastation of the sources of livelihood of the people of the province.
Rasool Bux Palijo, chief of Awami Tehreek, Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah, president, Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Abrar Qazi, secretary, Sindh Intellectual Forum, Prof Mushtaq Mirani, Jami Chandio, Dodo Maheri, Syed Qurban Ali Shah, Ayaz Latif Palijo, Nazir Memon and Dr Nazir Shaikh attended the meeting.
Mr Palijo and Mr Qazi were elected the president and secretary of the Sindh Water Committee unanimously.