Farmers take out rally against irrigation water theft

SUKKUR: Local farmers along with the workers of political parties took a rally from the Indus Highway to Ghanta Ghar of Mehar city against the irrigation water theft.

Reports said the farmers along with the activists of Sindh United Party and Awami Tehreek took out a rally against the water authorities and put effigies of executive engineer and SDO Rice Canal Larkana on a donkey cart to register their protest for lack of irrigation water. The rally ended at Ghanta Ghar where the protesters organised a sit-in and demanded to take action against the irrigation officials.

Meanwhile, addressing on the occasion, the representatives of farmers, Munawwar Jatoi, Muhammad Qasim Khaskheli and others claimed that the irrigation staff were selling their due share of water from Rice Canal, Kakol Wah, Salih Wah, Kuddan Wah, Raj Wah and other canals to the local landlords through illegal connections. They said the continuous lockdown owing to Covid-19 had already left hundreds of people unemployed, while the artificial shortage of irrigation water may cause chaos in the area.

They said the farmers started committing suicides because of acute poverty, a consequence of bad governance and victimisation polices adopted by the Sindh government. They said the provincial government, instead of providing relief to the growers, was deliberately depriving them from their due share of irrigation water. They said they had already lost millions of rupees but the irrigation minister and secretary did not seem to be addressing their grievances, while misleading PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.