MITHI, Jan 11: The people of Thar have appealed to the government, international donor agencies and philanthropists to provide relief to the drought-hit district.

The prolonged drought, which is third in succession in the past five years, has caused a massive exodus of the populace towards irrigated lands along the River Indus, besides perishing a large number of animals during the past five months.

Scant and erratic rainfall has dealt a deadly blow to the regional economy while destroying the local ecosystem, plunging a large number of families into an unending cycle of starvation in the absence of concerted relief efforts by the government or the NGOs.

The relief measures, so far taken, can only be termed in-sufficient as the people of the Thar desert are encountering the most difficult days of their lives.

Talking to this correspondent, the executive director of the Tharparkar Rural Development Programme, Dr Sono Khangharani, said that official circles might be under the impression that the current drought was like the previous ordinary droughts but the ground reality belied the belief.

Khangharani said that most of the Tharis were passing the toughest time of their lives because of lack of resources.

Businessmen and traders, he said, were reluctant to give them loans as most of the Thari families were already under a heavy burden of debts and lacked assets to pawn as collateral.

The Nazim of the Nagarparkar union council, Dalpat Rai, bemoaned the difficulties of the people of Nagarparkar and adjoining areas regarding drinking water.

He said that many wells of the area had either dried up or their water had turned brackish.

Water table had gone far below the levels ordinarily level in the local wells because of lack of recharge in the absence of rains, Dalpat Rai added.

The people, living in villages around the Karoonjhar Hills, said that around 40 per cent of poor families, specially belonging to the Kolhi, Bheel and Meghwar communities, had migrated to the barrage areas in search of food and water.

But, they added, they were unable to find relief as most of the areas in the barrage belts were already facing an acute shortage of irrigation water.

Thari labourers, they said, were unable to find either shelter or sustenance there.

The miseries, they said, were not confined to the families, who did not migrate, as a large number of their livestock and even wildlife, including crows, eagles, peacocks and antelopes, had perished during past few months owing to starvation.

Numerous villagers complained about embezzlement of the wheat, provided by the government for the drought-stricken people.

They said that though the government had dispatched 178,000 wheat bags for the drought-hit Tharis, a large share of the relief wheat had been embezzled by transporters, local landlords and officials of the food and revenue departments.

They also complained about the inferior quality of the wheat and its being of short in weight.

The attendance in schools, another indicator of the poor conditions of the people, has also declined by about 20 per cent, while the attendance in colleges recorded a decrease of around 30 per cent.

Some of the head masters, interviewed by this correspondent, said that most of the students, belonging to the marginalized sections, had migrated with their parents and they would not be able to appear in the annual examinations.

They said that the students would lose a year of their education.

Cattle raising, the main source of livelihood of the Tharis, also suffered a lot because of premature pregnancies in goats and sheep.