No relief for people affected by fire in Tharparkar

300 homes were gutted on Wednesday but no relief goods have reached village

HYDERABAD: A day after fire gutted around 300 mud and concrete houses and thatched huts in a village in Tharparkar, the affected people await adequate supply of relief goods and a government announcement of compensation. Over a dozen men and women were injured, mostly during the fire fighting, in the incident, which occurred in Chachro taluka's Odani village.

Some 600 maunds of wheat, 56 goats, 11 cows and two camels were lost due to the inferno. So far, around 100 tents have been supplied to the village by local authorities and former relief adviser Haleem Adil Shaikh, who belongs to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf.



Chachro Town Committee Chairman Qamaruddin Rahimo claimed that the fire was the biggest incident to have happened in any village in Chachro. He demanded Rs200,000 compensation for each burnt home.

According to Rahimo, the town committee has no fire tender and the only vehicle available was taken away to Dahili taluka by an influential politician to Dahili taluka.

Abetted by the strong winds and absence of fire tenders, the fire engulfed one house after another as attempts to douse the raging flames failed.



"When this huge village inhabited by thousands of people was burning, the Sindh cabinet was busy developing a plan to get rid of the IG," Shaikh told the media on Thursday.

Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in a statement, asked the provincial government to arrange relief goods for the victims. Some residents of Odani believe that the fire broke out due to a short circuit while the others think the flames from the burning wood in one of the kitchens in the village sparked the inferno.