Tales from Tori

Officials, including the chief engineer at Guddu, his supervisor and the then irrigation secretary of Sindh have been found responsible by a four-man commission set up by the Supreme Court for the breach of the Tori Dyke near Jacobabad at the height of the floods last year. The commission presented its detailed findings before a three-member bench of the court, and also noted that the concerned officials had made matters worse by deliberately attempting to mislead the commission. The breach of the Tori Dyke led to large-scale flooding and destruction in Balochistan, as water flowed across the provincial boundary. The purpose was to save the Shahbaz Airbase at Jacobabad and also, according to allegations made by the Balochistan government and some residents, to save agricultural lands belonging to influential persons in Sindh.

The broader findings of the commission, set up to investigate the issue of dyke breaches across the Indus River System, are immensely important. The commission has, in the first place, noted significant neglect in maintaining the dykes. Attempts had, for instance, been made to plug weak areas in the Tori Bund by removing materials from its top, leading to a reduction in its height. The same failure to maintain other embankments led to them being breached. The commission also noted that encroachment of land, the construction of roads and highways without leaving safety channels for water flow and the failure to take full advantage of information from the World Meteorology Organization — of which Pakistan is a member — had all contributed to additional damage caused by the floods.

There can, of course, be no excuse for this. Rules are set up to create safety margins in times of natural disaster. Their blatant violation, as we saw last year, aggravates the suffering of people. It is quite obvious that regulations need to be tightened. The court is set to make its own recommendations but the authorities also need to assess the upkeep of dykes ahead of the next rainy season and ensure drainage channels are created along roads so that a future disaster on the scale seen last year can be avoided.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2011.