ISLAMABAD, March 15: The federal government has not been able to resettle many of the people who were displaced by Tarbela Dam project 26 years ago.
A group of journalists came to know about the miseries of the people affected by Tarbela Dam on a one-day tour to Kangra and Khulabutt townships near Haripur. The trip was arranged by Sungi Development Foundation on the International Day of Action Against Large Dams.
Many of the displaced people are still waiting for the land allotted to them in lieu of their displacements. According to a report, around 1,144 of the 96,000 displaced people are yet to be resettled.
These people allegedly refused to settle in Sindh when the government was forced to offer them land there under a World Bank condition for the release of $2.5b for Ghazi Barotha Power Project.
However, the Social Organization for Mutaasirin-i-Tarbela (SMT) claimed that in 1996, a World Bank team held meetings with the affected people of Tarbela, collected copies of the claims which had already been deposited with Wapda and found out that more than 3,000 claims had not been entertained. The WB report is available with Wapda, the SMT added.
SMT president Ayaz Khan informed reporters that an Independent Tarbela Commission (ITC) was then constituted to compensate the displaced people. Through a newspaper announcement, the affected people were asked to deposit their land claims with the said commission.
ITC chairman A. R. Siddiqui received 11,000 applications, out of which 5,000 claims were for residential plots and 6,000 for agriculture land. However, the applications were unilaterally processed and out of 6,000 of them, only 1,954 were declared genuine.
He said the deputy secretary (colonies) West Pakistan had issued orders for the allocation of 100,000 acres of land in Sindh and Punjab for resettlement of the displaced people. So far, only 30,000 acres of land has been allocated, which means that 70 per cent of the cases are still outstanding, he added.
Meanwhile, commenting on a report of World Commission on Dams (WCD), a representative of Sungi said an estimated 60 per cent rivers of the world had dams. Big dams have led to the loss of aquatic biodiversity in fisheries, wetlands and estuaries as well as floods in the plains downstream.
The WCD found out that 20 per cent of the earth’s land irrigated by large dams had been lost to salination and waterlogging while five per cent of the world’s fresh water evaporated from the dam’s reservoirs. It also found out that between one to 28 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions came from water reservoirs.