Health indicators improving in Thar, insists Qaim

Karachi

Dismissing the widely held impression that Thar has not seen any development since 2008 when the Pakistan Peoples Party came into power in the province, Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has said the infant mortality rate and other health indicators have improved in the desert area due to his government’s timely intervention.

He was speaking in the provincial assembly where he gave a policy statement before the house concluded debate on Thursday on health and food emergency situation persisting in the desert area. 

”We are not providing any excuses for deaths of children in Thar. These are our children as the death of even a single child is highly tragic. Matters of life and death are with God but it is obligatory upon the government to save these lives.”

In his speech, Shah compared Sindh’s health indicators with those of Punjab, and said the situation especially related to newborns in the province was not so seriously alarming as it was being portrayed in the media. 

He referred to the statistics of the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey-2014 showing that 88.4 babies died per 1,000 at birth in Punjab, and in Sindh the infant mortality rate stood at 74.8 per 1,000.

He said his government had been conducting consultations with national and international experts on controlling the health emergency situation in Thar, while the health department had also been working to reverse the situation.

“During the period of [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto, an arid zone was announced for the area, while now we are in the process of constituting the Thar Development Authority.”  

He said 400 reverse osmosis water filtration plants had been established in Thar for providing clean drinking water to its dwellers. In most of the areas in Thar, basic facilities, including electricity and hospitals, had been established, he added. 

Shah protested that opposition parties and media had been incorrectly depicting the situation in Thar. He added that in the year 1971 when he had travelled from Mithi to Chachro in Thar, the journey had been completed in nine hours, but in the present day the same journey could be completed easily within one and a half hours.

“Karachi belongs to all of us while I acquired all my education from the city while Thar also belongs to all.”

Shah said former chief minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, now an opposition MPA, did not do anything for the development and progress of the desert area although he was a native of Thar.

He said the PPP governments in Sindh had provided jobs to some 7,000 people during the last seven year, while those who had earlier remained in power in the province for an extended period of 10 years had not provided any employment; rather, they had fired people from service.

He said the law and order and employment situation worsened in the province when military regimes were in power while the efforts made by his government over the last five to six years had changed the socio-economic conditions in Thar to a great extent.  He said that due to efforts of the PPP government the Thar area was going to witness investments to the tune of $4.5 billion. 

He noted that the first PPP government formed after the 1970 general election had launched development works in Thar, and those works had been continuing to date.

Earlier in his speech, Leader of Opposition Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan said he had been delivering speeches in the house on Thar for the past four years, but the situation had not seen any improvement on any account so far.  He said there were 35 government departments and eight boards to run the affairs in every district, but there was not even a single union council in the entire province where the situation could be termed ideal. 

He said the suggestions formally forwarded by opposition lawmakers had not been included in the last budget though the finance minister had solicited proposals.

He said that due to faulty policies of the government, hundreds of human beings and animals died in Thar where drought conditions had been prevailing. 

He claimed that the livestock department was nowhere to be seen to control the situation. He said the rising deaths showed that government funds were not being judicially disbursed in the area.

The opposition leader said the volume of Sindh’s budget was larger than the budgets of 48 countries in the world but due to corruption and mismanagement, the masses were not getting any relief.

MQM parliamentary leader Syed Sardar Ahmed said the situation as regards government funds had improved after the announcement of the last NFC award by the Centre. He emphasised that such funds now abundantly available should be judicially used.