Monsoon nucleus shifts from India to Pakistan

Water and Power Minister Naveed Qamar dropped a bombshell in the federal cabinet meeting on Thursday by informing the participants that extraordinary monsoon rains would continue to affect life in Pakistan for the next 20 years, and the country’s sewage system was too inadequate to deal with such a scale of rains, which was why most parts of Sindh and southern Punjab were inundated by rainwater.
A source told Pakistan Today that the minister told the cabinet members that latest Met Office research had revealed that the “monsoon nucleus” had shifted from India to Pakistan and it was most likely that the same pattern of heavy rains would persist for the next 20 years. “The minister said further that the sewage system of the country was not designed to cope with such large-scale rains and this was the reason the system had choked during last year’s floods and the same thing happened this year as well,” said the source, adding that the minister also told the cabinet that the crops of cotton, rice and fruit grown on massive areas of Sindh and southern Punjab had been washed away by the rains.
The source said the minister urged Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to ensure provision of seeds and fertiliser to the affected farmers for the next crops as compensation. This suggestion was supported by other ministers from Sindh and southern Punjab, who said the government should import fertiliser to meet domestic needs.
SHAIKH OBJECTS: “However, Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh objected to the idea of importing fertiliser and said it would cost the local farmers heavily and they would seek subsidy from the government on fertilisers, a demand the government could not fulfill,” said the source. The cabinet was told that all possible help and relief were being extended to the flood victims by the federal and provincial governments. The prime minister said that he had personally visited the flood-hit areas and discussed relief measures with the National Assembly speaker and the Sindh chief minister.
The principal secretary to the prime minister briefed the cabinet on the measures taken by the federal government and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), which he said had already provided 28,000 tents and sufficient quantity of food and medicine to flood victims. The source said the prime minister had also urged the provincial governments to take immediate measures to counter the dengue epidemic. He also said all parliamentarians should ensure that insecticides should be sprayed in their respective constituencies. The cabinet expressed serious concerns about the infiltration of Afghan Taliban into Pakistan in Dir and Chitral.
The cabinet was also briefed by Interior Minister Rehman Malik about the endeavors of the Sindh government and law enforcement agencies to restore peace to Karachi, and the assistance of the Interior Ministry in that respect.