Following directives of the Supreme Court over the findings of the flood inquiry commission, the government of Sindh on Tuesday dismissed five SDOs and eight engineers from the irrigation department.
According to a private television channel, the officials were dismissed over the findings of the report issued by the commission and submitted to the apex court nearly two weeks ago.
The report had indicated dereliction of duty on part of officials from the concerned department.
The report also stated that the Tori bund had suffered years of neglect in maintenance that eroded its height to a dangerous level long before the flood season last year.
The report moreover said the nation suffered a loss of Rs855 billion, besides complete loss of one additional Rabi crop in Jaffarabad district of Balochistan, because of inefficiency and corruption in the irrigation departments of Sindh and Balochistan. The gross loss to the nation was almost 5.8 per cent of the GDP.
The report recommended legal proceedings against officials in charge of irrigation structures for inefficiency, negligence or corrupt practices identified in departmental inquiries and said that the then Sindh irrigation secretary and the chief engineer at Guddu were well aware of the poor state of Tori bund long before the flood and they had adequate time, but failed to take corrective actions.
The report said the chief engineer and irrigation secretary consciously and deliberately tried to attribute disaster to inadequate maintenance and funding constraints. Likewise, the superintending engineer and executive engineer in charge of the breached bunds in Guddu and Kotri command areas were also responsible for the catastrophe, it added.
The report did not rule out the possibility that certain elements within the irrigation hierarchies misled the political leadership about benefits of creation of additional water storages.
