KARACHI: An alarmingly low precipitation-led drought that has entered its third year in Thar continues to force low-income communities to mass-migrate as now malnutrition has started taking children’s lives after taking a huge toll on livestock, which is their sole ‘milk and butter’, The News has learnt.
The most affected of them all are the non-Muslim communities like Kohli, Meghwar and Bheel, as the prevailing baleful living conditions have resulted in the internal displacement of least 50 percent of the members of these minorities that are indigenous to Thar.
Muhammad Qasim Soomro, member of the provincial assembly (MPA) from Thar, told The News that, at least 250 millilitres of rainfall was required every year to fulfill the water-related needs of people, livestock, and agriculture but during last three years there had not fallen more than 35 millilitres/annum, that too in pockets.
Children are dying due to malnutrition, as livestock has been moved away from the inhabited parts of Thar to other areas. It is because water is not available. The people, who can afford, do get some water on higher prices, but poor communities cannot have this luxury.
Soomro said the chances of malnutrition were rare as around 7.0 million heads of livestock, mostly bovines, were there in Thar and their milk was good enough to keep the children nourished. “However, in some areas the water is contaminated with arsenic and its consumption leads to health hazards,” he added.
Poonjo Bheel, former MPA from Thar and general secretary Pakistan Peoples’ Party Minority Wing, said Kohli and Bheel communities remained discriminately away from the mainstream jobs and other permanent livelihood opportunities, thus, they relied on land and livestock, which was not enough to meet their needs during the drought.
“Along with the non-Muslim communities, poor Muslims are also migrating,” he said.
Bheel added that cultivation of land without water was next to impossible. “Livestock, their only sustenance, needs water and grass to live on. In the absence of both, survival has become even harder for them compared to Muslim communities, whose members also have other means of living,” Bheel said.
The minority leader said along with well-off Muslims, some rich non-Muslim families were also staying put, as they can afford to purchase water supplied through tanker-trucks. “Unfortunately, the reverse osmosis (RO) plants that desalinate brackish ground water were mostly installed in the villages of influential people,” he said.
Casting his concerns over the exodus, he said nearly 50 percent of non-Muslim communities had migrated towards the barrage areas and there had never been a migration at such a large scale in the past. “It should not be forgotten that drought has entered its third year as Thar has seen little to no rain since 2014-15,” the former lawmaker from Thar said.
Tharis say, though, provincial government has started providing assistance to the affected communities -in the shape of water and wheat- but it is too little and sometimes becomes too late owing to difficult verification process. People are facing myriad of trouble as most of the national identity cards, in the area, are unverified and majority of people do not have any identification papers.
To this Muhammad Qasim Soomro, the MPA from Thar, said the reason behind these issues was the unavailability of family identity cards, as majority of the women usually did not get their cards updated after marriage.
He also claimed that majority of the people in the area held valid identity cards, as they had them updated after Benazir Income Support Programme, which could only be availed against a valid national identity card.
A source, however, said even relief work was confined to areas of the local ‘big guns’. “It is being carried out in the mostly affluent and only urban areas. “Relief work is mostly centered in only Mithi, Nangar, and Islamkot. A hugely populated area of nearly 50 kilometer around Nangar has not even received a single bottle of water or a bag of wheat,” the official said.
The source said he had been witnessing nearly 70 to 100 truckloads of people migrating from Thar to other areas for the last two months. “Sweet water wells in village Malji near Nangar, which supplied water to most of the populated areas, are either drying or becoming unpalatable,” he said.
MPA Soomro verified that water harvesting ponds and shallow wells had dried. He said the present government was doing its best to provide water to Thari people through pipelines and RO plants. “Nearly 500 RO plants have been installed and work on another 82 plants was underway,” Soomro said adding around 40 percent of the plants were currently dysfunctional because of the shortage diesel. “Now, we are switching those diesel-fired RO plants to solar power,” he said.
Soomro said nearly 80 billion cubic meters of underground water is available in Thar and the government was planning to utilise that water for the cultivation of alternative vegetation.