Pakistan: Sindh United Party warns of eco devastation as protestors reject 6 new canals

Leaders, activists, and supporters of various nationalist parties held a large rally from the Gymkhana Club to the local press club in protest against the federal government’s plan to dig six new canals to be supplied with water from the Indus.

Office-bearers and members of growers’ associations, the legal community, business and trade organisations, as well as civil society groups, also joined the rally held on December 5, Dawn reported.

During the protest, participants staged a sit-in outside the press club. The rally was led by Sindh United Party (SUP) leader Syed Zain Shah and Sindh Abadgar Board leader Haji Mohammad Umer Bughio.

Carrying banners and placards with slogans denouncing “all anti-Sindh” projects, the participants marched along the main Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas road, chanting protests against these projects, particularly the plan to dig six new canals.

According to the report, addressing the protesters, Syed Zain Shah stated that the canal project was a malicious conspiracy designed to render Sindh’s lands barren and deprive its people of access to even drinking water. He expressed concern that this project would economically devastate Karachi, the country’s industrial hub, as well as Hyderabad, the province’s second-largest city.

The SUP leader announced that a large-scale protest campaign would be launched across Sindh to pressure the federal government into abandoning the project for good.

He warned that if the project was not cancelled, the people of Sindh would block the highways leading to Punjab. He emphasised that all major political groups, nationalist organisations, civil society groups, as well as the business, trade, and legal communities, had united in rejecting the plan.

He added that a united effort was already underway and would be escalated if the federal government persisted with the project. The SUP leader highlighted that Sindh had been grappling with a severe shortage of irrigation water for decades, a situation that had worsened significantly, Dawn reported.

The most affected areas were Mirpurkhas division and the Larr region, where there had been no water flows downstream of the Kotri Barrage. He warned that this project would lead to a disaster for Sindh, fearing that it could force hundreds of thousands of people to migrate to other provinces.

He stated that the people of Sindh would strongly oppose the project by all means. Sindh Abadgar Board’s Mirpurkhas president Haji Mohammad Umer Bughio, along with Mehmood Nawaz Shah, Zahid Bhurgari, Lala Azhar Pathan, Sarfaraz Junejo, Zulfikar Yousfani, and Mir Zubair Talpur also addressed the sit-in. Other leaders present included Mumtaz Marri, Umeed Ali Thebo, and Ali Hassan Chandio.

(with inputs from ANI)