Deadly incompetence

It is time that state take genuine responsibility to help Tharis and work to improve the situation in the area.

Considering the range of natural disasters that Pakistan is vulnerable to and increasingly plagued by, our lack of preparedness should be a matter of surprise — but that is not so. Tharparkar is an area where life is a grim struggle at the best of times, and the annual drought is a time when the population is most at risk. There are reports that around 121 children have died as a result of malnutrition in the last three months. Let us be plain about this — these children starved to death. A slow and painful process that takes months, even in children who may be frail to begin with. As many as 32 are said to have died in February, but both the Sindh government and the World Health Organisation are wary of sharing their figures as being definitive and there are huge gaps in data-gathering from the 2,000 villages spread across the largest desert in the country.



Evidently, there is a humanitarian crisis in Tharparkar that requires the most urgent intervention. Assorted officials, politicians and their retinues have suddenly started to visit the area, a sure sign that all is far from well. The problem appears to have been exacerbated by a change in rainfall patterns, with moderate to low precipitation lasting until the end of September, which caused the government to delay its annual relief programme. This usually runs from November or December and continues until spring — but not this year. The provincial government has not paid transporters for their work in 2012 delivering relief, and they are understandably reluctant to put themselves deeper in debt today. Cattle, sheep, goats and peacocks have all died in considerable numbers. Unless relief is provided immediately, the spectre of out-and-out famine will be upon the people of Tharparkar and that need not have been so. A chronic and endemic failure of competent management and governance is condemning the poorest of our peoples to a lingering death. This shameful state of affairs must change and it is time that the state took genuine responsibility to help better the lot of the Tharis and worked to improve the situation in the area.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2014.

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