Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has declared rain emergency in Sindh irrigation and local government departments to meet out any eventuality of heavy rains and flood-like situation.
The chief minister directed the provincial disaster management authority (PDMA), all the commissioners and deputy commissioners jointly to prepare rain emergency contingency plan for each district and mobilize human resources with drainage and flood protective machinery to ensure efficient and safe passage of flood/storm water to avoid devastation like situation and save infrastructure in case of heavy rain fall during current monsoon.
The chief minister also formed a 4-member committee with provincial minister for information and local government Sharjeel Inam Memon, Chief Secretary Sajjad Salim Hotiyana, Commissioner Shoab Siddiqui and KMC Administrator Rauf Akhtar Siddiqui to sit together, find out ways and means to remove obstacle, encroachment from drainage nalla and make them functional, arrange efficient disposal of garbage, conduct survey and identify old dangerous buildings/bill boards posing threat to the human lives during current monsoon season and directed them to get evacuated such building and remove these billboard to avoid loss of human lives.
He directed this while presiding over a high-level meeting regarding monsoon or flood emergency held at Chief Minister House. The meeting was connected with all divisional and district headquarters of the province through video link.
Whereas Sindh Minister for Relief Makhdoom Jameel Zaman, Sindh Minister Local Government Sharjeel Inam Memon, Advisor for CM for Finance Syed Murad Ali Shah, Chief Secretary Sajjad Saleem Hotiyana, Senior Member Board of Revenue Malik Israr Ahmed, Additional Chief Secretary (P&D) Mohammad Wasim, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Alamudin Bulo, Secretary Agriculture Babar Afandi, Secretary Finance Sohail Ahmed Rajput, Secretary Health Iqbal Durrani, Director General PDMA, representatives from Pak Army, Navy and other officers of relevant departments/organisations attended the meeting.
Addressing the meeting, the chief minister said that PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari and Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari were very much anxious for ensuring all precautionary measures in such a way so that loss of life and infrastructure could be minimised in case of heavy rain or flood-like situation during current monsoon. He said the government had invested huge amount to protect the river embankments after flood in 2010 and also strengthened the civil and local government administration to cope with such situation with success.
The chief minister directed the authorities of irrigation department to mobilise its all resources, and ensure that its all embankments, including old TORRI band were strong enough to sustain the pressure of upcoming flood.
He directed them to plug all the cuts in river embankments that had been made by the villagers to make their ways inside and also to warn the villagers residing inside the river banks to shift to safer places.
The chief minister while directing the concerned officers for having efficient drainage system at urban areas directed the management of KMC to ensure that it’s all drainage network was functional and de-watering machines and pump houses were in working conditions. Responding to the bottlenecks that pointed out by the KMC administrator and the commissioner about the encroachment and dumping of garbage along with drainage line.
The secretary irrigation while briefing the meeting said that as per rough estimate, the Sindh was suppose to receive water flow of 3 lac to 3.5 lac cusec but after September 12, 2014, it could rise up to 4 lac to 5 lac cusec but it will not go beyond the medium flood.
The PDMA DG, commissioners of Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Larkana briefed the meeting that they had made contingency plans for each district of their division and hopefully they were in a position to meet the situation successfully, however, Hyderabad Commissioner Syed Jamal Mustafa Shah stressed for early completion of two ongoing drainage components of Qasim Abad. The PDMA DG informed the meeting that Rs 2 crore had been released to each district to meet out with any rain emergency.