Pakistan's Sindh province faces 'calamity' like situation due to water shortage

Islamabad [Pakistan], May 16 : Amid the recording-breaking temperature in the southeastern region of Pakistan, Sindh province is staring at a 'calamity' like situation due to a shortage of water.
This comes as inter-provincial disputes over water sharing have increased in Pakistan amid scorching heatwave condition that has claimed severed lives.
Urging the government to declare the province 'calamity-hit', the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) has expressed its concern over an acute shortage of water in Sindh, the Dawn newspaper reported.
An SCA meeting on Sunday demanded that loans of small farmers having up to 16 acres be waived and stressed that an inquiry should be conducted into a shortfall of cusecs flows.
Sindh activists staged a demonstration in protest against persisting water shortage outside the local press club on Sunday.
While Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is now part of the ruling coalition in the federal government, still it is not able to get Sindh's water share from Punjab, said Sindh United Party (SUP) leader Roshan Ali Buriro.
According to the SUP leader, robbery over Indus river water and share of Sindh was being committed through the Chashma-Jhelum link canal and Thal canal but the PPP government was criminally silent over it.
Ali Buriro contended that the PPP government was responsible for the shortage of irrigation as well as drinking water and said that despite nagging water shortage in the province lands of feudal lords continued to receive water illegally through channels while the land of poor peasants and political opponents of PPP were deprived of even a drop of water on the pretext of shortage.
As many as 70 percent of Sindh's small cities and towns were waiting for the supply of water, he was quoted as saying by Dawn. The PPP had been in power for 30 years yet it had not been able to provide even drinking water to the province, he said.