Train services in Sibi still suspended

QUETTA: Train services remained suspended in Sibi for the sixth consecutive day as the extent of track damage continued to unravel on Tuesday. Full repairs, however, are expected to be completed later today.

Since the rail tracks were damaged in several places, repairmen found it harder to restore normal services, according to Pakistan Railway officials. Road links between Jhal Magsi and Ghandawa also remained unrestored. Both these towns remain cut off from the rest of the country. Power supplies in Sibi town and the entire plain could not be resumed as officials of the power utility, Qesco, were still repairing the transmission line that had been washed away by floods.

Relief work

Relief efforts were being carried out in Sibi, Kohlu, Jaffarabad, Naseerabad and Barkhan where local administration officials distributed food and relief goods among the affectees.

“We have received six trucks of relief goods, which were distributed among the affected people,” said Shahid Saleem, Sibi’s deputy commissioner. Similarly, 12 trucks arrived in Barkhan and two in Naseerabad.

Kohlu’s deputy commissioner, Nasrullah Rind, said that the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) had dispatched 200 tents, 300 sacks of wheat, medicines and other relief items for the affected region. Power supply had been restored in Kohlu after five days of disruption.

Criticism continued to mount over the inadequacy of the current relief operations. A local journalist, Naseer Mastoi, claimed that representatives of the government were busy in ‘photo sessions’ with little concern for the welfare of the majority of the people living under the open skies. He urged international donor agencies to come forward to help the affected people.

Opposition member of the Balochistan Assembly, Bakhtiar Khan Domki has said that the government has been delaying relief operations leaving most of the affectees in Baktiarabad without proper food and clean drinking water. Domki threatened to organise a demonstration in Quetta if immediate steps were not taken for the flood-affected people.

According to an initial survey, 3,000 people of two union councils had been uprooted by hill torrents in Kohlu district.  The affected people from Sibi and Kohlu have demanded immediate rehabilitation of devastated villages. “Our houses should be repaired on a priority basis,” said Sabir Domki, a resident of Baktiarabad. In view of the heavy rainfall in southern and eastern Balochistan, the administration of Sibi and Naseerabad have warned that if another hill torrent lashed the area, the situation will get out of hand.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2010.