Tori dyke breach saved Sindh: Khursheed Shah

Labour and Manpower Minister says breach in Tori Bund helped save vast tracts of land in Sindh.

SUKKUR: Labour and Manpower Minister Khursheed Ahmed Shah said on Saturday that vasts tracts of land in the province had been spared from the fury of the flood had the Tori embankment not been breached.

“Those who have been criticising me for breaching the Tori bund are playing politics on this issue. There is a 90-kilometre distance between Tori and Ali Wahan bund. If Ali Wahan bund had been breached, it would have caused unimaginable devastation,” he told reporters in Sukkur.

Reports in the media had alleged that Shah had forced irrigation authorities to breach Tori instead of Ali Wahan, in order to save his own land.

“I have saved the country’s trade and agriculture by breaching Tori bund, because it has affected merely one part of Sindh. Otherwise, the country would have been virtually divided,” Shah said. “I fully accept the responsibility for what I have done. And I am ready to face any punishment for that,” he said.

PML merger

Shah said that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) welcomed the proposed alliance of various Pakistan Muslim League (PML) factions. Leaders from these parties will be meeting in Lahore on October 29 to finalise the merger.

“If there is any alliance of different PML factions, we would welcome that,” he said, but added he did not see any such alliance in the near future. “We will be happy if there is a united PML, but I don’t see that in the near future because they (PML leaders) cannot even pray together,” he said.

Shah dispelled the impression that political parties were involved in targeted killings and ethnic violence in Karachi. Instead, he claimed, mafias are involved in these incidents and the Sindh government must take stern action against them.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24^th, 2010.