Shadadkot under threat

Rising levels at Kotri Barrage add to the danger. Efforts to protect the city by building walls have failed.

The flood waters that have already laid waste to so much in our country continue their ruthless march forwards. The half a million people of Shahdadkot have almost all fled, as waters flowing down the Indus and other waterways reached the outskirts of the city and threaten to engulf it. Rising levels at the Kotri Barrage add to the dangers. Efforts to protect the city by building walls at key places have failed.

As we have seen when Muzaffargarh, Jacobabad and other smaller centres were evacuated, people basically have nowhere to go. Authorities have struggled to provide transport and the camps that have been set up simply cannot cater to the needs of a multitude of the displaced who have in some cases been forced out of their homes with only the clothes on their backs. Local authorities in inundated areas concede they are overwhelmed and do not know what to do. They cannot be blamed for their sense of panic in the face of disaster. But this cannot alter the fact that the suffering of people somehow needs to be lessened; some means found to offer them relief.

It is here we would expect our national leaders to step in. The sense of direction and resolve needed in such times must come from them. Quarrelling over the setting up of relief commissions or arguing over how funds are to be allocated serves no useful purpose at all for people who walk for miles along sun-scorched highways or search for comfort in camps where there is too little water, food or shelter. It is true the scale of this disaster is immense. It has not yet stopped inflicting havoc; we have no way of knowing when this will happen. But it is obvious that means need to be found to make inroads into the misery that has spread out like the waters. This, after all, is what people seek from the government. Ours has to find a way to deliver or face anger as fierce as the flood itself.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 22^nd, 2010.