The Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) has appreciated the efforts of the Sindh Assembly lawmakers, who actively participated in the process of amending the “Sindh Irrigation Act-1879” for the removal encroachments from natural and artificial depression courses on government lands.
In a letter of appreciation to the provincial assembly speaker Nisar Khuhro, PILER Executive Director Karamat Ali hoped that the government will carry on working on the structural changes that are needed to ensure citizens’ access to basic rights and fundamental entitlements such as the right to decent life, livelihood, social justice and environment safety.
In the letter, the PILER head said the growth and spread of settlements around floodplains is an ongoing trend, putting the settled communities at grave risk of flooding in times of heavy monsoon rains.
“Encroachments on natural or artificial depression courses obviously obstruct the flow of rainwater triggering pervasive devastation during floods. The amendments in the Sindh Irrigation Act 1879 will certainly go a long way in preventing miseries that come about from floods that result from obstruction to smooth water flows,” he stated in the letter.
“At the same time, we do feel that more needs to be done in the area of disaster prevention as natural disasters, particularly floods, seem to have become a regular phenomenon. Being an elected set-up, the current assemblies are seen by people as their hope for a secure future as in a functioning democracy, public representatives uphold the voice of the people and interests of the citizens,” he added.
He urged the government to speed up efforts to put in place necessary safeguards as the province braces for another round of floods later this year.
In this regard, he made a few suggestions with the hope that Khuhro will consider them seriously and facilitate a constructive debate in the Sindh Assembly on the issues highlighted.
Ali pointed out that these suggestions have been drawn from a broad range of consultations held with members of civil society across Pakistan to develop “The Citizens Charter”, that carry a comprehensive blueprint for disaster mitigation and management, restoration of environment, and settlement and livelihood reforms for the flood affected community.
The charter also calls for the restoration of the basic citizenship rights of the people who have, over the years, been marginalised by an exclusionary state structure that favours a skewed distribution of resources and denies a large majority of people their fundamental right to decent life.
He proposed to address the issue of deforestation on an urgent basis. Apart from taking measures to put a halt to it, the forest cover of the province also needs a serious revisit by the elected representatives with a view to expanding it on an urgent basis.
He pointed out that in the last two decades, Pakistan has lost a quarter of its natural forest cover and currently the deforestation rate is two percent a year – one of the highest in the world. Sindh has also lost natural forest due to encroachments on natural waterways. Sindh covers an area of 14.1 million hectares comprising 18 percent of the country’s total land mass. Due to its predominantly arid condition, the forest resources of Sindh cover only 2.3 per cent of the total land area of the province. According to a study by the Sindh Forest Department, the riverine forests of Sindh, comprising 241,000 hectares that grow mostly along the river Indus in the flood plains, are vanishing rapidly. Along with other factors, sprawling encroachment is a major reason behind deforestation in the riverine belt. According to a WWF study, more than 40,000 hectares of riverine forests has been taken over by land grabbers. Not only does deforestation put our population at multiple risks from environmental degradation, it also adds to the disaster risk of the local communities.
Ali urged the Sindh Assembly to promote the idea of public infrastructure projects that should be designed on the basis of sustainable human development needs of the local community and environment. In this regard, he emphasised that we have repeatedly witnessed the impact of poor and ill-planned infrastructure in times of rains as observed in Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur and Shikarpur following the last two years floods.
Apart from basic services such as safe drinking water, solid waste management, sewage and drainage, urban planning also needs to factor in disaster risk reduction measures as the capacity of the existing order in dealing with disasters, including floods and earthquake, is very limited.
He recommended restoring a consensus-backed local government system that draws public representation from the grassroots and work with the deep involvement of communities for the execution and functioning of development projects in the province. The UN Climate Summit held at Durban, South Africa ranked Pakistan number one on the list of countries worst hit by the extreme weather in 2010. The Disaster Management Act 2010 deems the role of local government, and municipal authorities within disaster management and for this purpose remains heavily dependent on elected local councillors. The uncertainty and later suspension of the local government system left a vacuum that led to the slow response to the floods in the Province in 2010. In 2011, the commissionerate system was put in place that again failed to effectively address the devastating floods that year.