Sindh plans Tharparkar drought relief after calamity declaration

Sindh is assembling a relief response for drought-hit Tharparkar, days after Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah declared the district calamity-hit on Saturday and ordered departments to act immediately.

A review meeting decided that officials will survey shortages of food and clean drinking water, access to education, maternal and child healthcare and the condition of livestock, and submit their findings within three days, The Nation reported. Relief work is to be prioritised in Diplo, Dahli, Chachro and Nagar Parkar, with special attention to women and children.

The meeting weighed food supplies, direct financial assistance, food vouchers and support routed through the Benazir Income Support Programme. Officials will also assess how the district's reverse osmosis plants are performing, discussed deploying mobile hospitals and were told to build a digital map to coordinate relief operations.

Murad Ali Shah ordered an uninterrupted drinking water supply, the immediate repair of non-functional RO plants and the restoration of all existing water sources. He asked the chief secretary to examine the feasibility of a pipeline from Naukot to Mithi, and to recommend measures to protect livestock, which The Nation described as a major source of local livelihood.

Pakistan Today reported in a feature by an Umerkot-based writer that drought pushes thousands of Bheel families each year to seal their wells and their mud chaunras and travel for weeks to canal barrage areas including Matli, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Badin and Thatta. Khangaar Bheel, a migrant head of household, told the outlet that by the time the family reaches the barrage half its cattle are too weak to stand and the children have missed months of school.

Citing regional surveys and NGO baseline assessments, Pakistan Today put sowing losses at Rs 80,000 to Rs 130,000 for a family after a failed monsoon, and further losses of Rs 120,000 to Rs 180,000 from selling cattle below market rates. Transport for one family costs Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 in a drought year, the report said.

The same report, citing government and UN assessments including work by IOM, FAO and the Sindh Disaster Management Authority, said 30 to 45 percent of rural people in the hyper-arid union councils of Tharparkar and Umerkot migrate in moderate to severe drought years. It said more than 78 percent of migrating families belong to Bheel, Meghwar and Kohlis households, and that 62 percent of their children drop out of primary school, with fewer than five percent returning smoothly.

Pakistan Today reported that households lose 30 to 40 percent of their herds in transit to diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, and that migrant families work as cotton pickers, cane harvesters and wheat threshers on daily wages or informal tenancy terms.