Though the Met Office has predicted the first spell of monsoon rains to hit Sindh from Monday, with warnings of urban flooding, authorities in Hyderabad still appear to be grappling with the issue of cleaning the city's nullahs.
In order to fend off the threat of inundation, Hyderabad deputy commissioner Fuad Ghaffar Soomro began to prod the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) and Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) to clean the nullahs in the first week of June. Both agencies, however, cited paucity of funds as an obstacle to large-scale desilting exercises.
Where WASA demanded Rs130 million for the task, the HMC also asked for Rs40 million. On Jun 10, Soomro sent a request for Rs200 million to the Sindh local government department, adding Rs30 million for Qasimabad Municipal Committee and Tandojam Municipal Committee. However, the funds have not yet been released, the DC confirmed to The Express Tribune.
An official who attended a meeting chaired by Hyderabad commissioner Muhammad Abbass Baloch on Friday said they were told the funds would be released in a couple of days. However, the exact amount of the funding is still not known.
"The chief minister [Syed Murad Ali Shah] told us during a recent meeting that they had set aside Rs70 million for Hyderabad and the same amount would be released for now," HMC mayor Syed Tayyab Hussain told The Express Tribune. "We have told the district administration and the Sindh government time and again that we lack the funds needed to desilt the nullah."
Hussain also restated the HMC's stance that the drainage pumping stations and nullahs were WASA's responsibility as of April, 2016. "There are eight large nullahs in the areas under HMC's jurisdiction the WASA is supposed to clean," he claimed, adding, "Time is running out. The government should immediately disburse the funds."
At the meeting, Baloch directed officials to prepare a contingency plan, also asking Hyderabad Electric Supply Company to electrify vital drainage pumping stations through two feeders, so that if one feeder developed a fault, the other could provide power. HESCO officials assured him this would be done in a week.
Unpaid HDA employees
Meanwhile, the Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) Officers Welfare Association appealed to the Supreme Court to take notice of the non-payment of their salaries for the last seven months.
Shahnawaz Qureshi, the association's general secretary, said on Friday that HDA employees had grown disillusioned with their executives as well as the Sindh government. "The issue of unpaid salaries has dragged on for years, turning employees into beggars," he lamented, adding that even protests in the form of water supply suspension or the blocking of drainage had failed to budge the authorities.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 4th, 2020.
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