Brackish water, no health facility makes life unbearable for Kohistan dwellers

Several children have developed deformities, some have died in the last three months.

HYDERABAD:

It has been nearly three months since 11-year-old Waseem Shoro was able to stand on his feet. The resident of Thatta’s arid Kohistan region developed a mysterious impairment in both his legs — a disease that has either been left undiagnosed or was not explained to his parents by doctors at the Kotri taluka hospital in Jamshoro district.

“He used to run around and play with the other children until about a few months ago,” his mother, Naila Shoro, recalls. “He cannot even stand on his feet now.” Naila carries her bed-ridden son wherever he needs to go. The family lives in Faqir Muhammad Shoro village, near the newly-built Darawat dam, on a mountain plain in Thatta’s Jhimpir tehsil.

Parts of the tehsil, much like its neighbouring areas of Kohistan, have been plagued by drought-like conditions, although a drought has not been officially declared. A survey, organised by the Pakistan Relief Foundation (PRF), revealed many children suffering from similar deformities in these parts of Kohistan.



In another village, located a few kilometres away from the dam, a village elder, Ibrahim Shoro, reveals that seven children have died over the last three months. “The figure may not be as high as in Tharparkar,” he says. “But the deaths of seven children hold a lot of significance in a village with a total population of just 400 to 500 people.

In Jan Muhammad Burfat village, residents prepared for the funeral of eight-year-old Rashid Burfat. Rashid’s corpse was dressed in the attire of a groom — a local tradition of burying unmarried boys. The grief-stricken father, who sat by his son’s corpse, removed the shroud from his face to show how weak the child had grown prior to his death. “I feel sad because I couldn’t take care of my child. I did not have enough funds for his medical treatment.”

The lack of health facilities has added to the miseries and harsh living conditions of the Kohistan dwellers. The closest health facility in Jhimpir is around 18 kilometres away, while the ones in Kotri and Jamshoro are approximately 40 to 45km away. Another government hospital in the industrial hub of Nooriabad is at a distance of up to 20km from these villages. To top it off, public transport visits the area only once a week and arranging for private transport is well beyond their means.



Back in Faqir Muhammad Shoro village, Naila blames fate for Waseem’s condition. “It was predestined that he would live his life this way,” she sighs. Despite her fatalist interpretation of her son’s health, however, she also acknowledges other factors that actually explain the cause of the boy’s condition. “We are very poor. We can’t afford proper food for ourselves, let alone our children. The drinking water is also very dirty and salty.”

The dirty and salty water she refers to is the brackish subsoil water - their prime source of drinking water. The other sources, besides the costly water tanker that they seldom get, are the seasonal rainwater channels (nullah) and small ponds in the depression in the ground.

Nai Baran is the largest and longest seasonal nullah in the area. It brings water down from Kirthar and snakes through the mountains and plains before emptying into River Indus. These sources, however, rarely last a month or so, depending on the quantity of rainfall.

“There was very little rainfall last year,” says elderly Allah Dino Shoro of village Umer Shoro. “The water in the shallow depression along the nullah and other plains of Kohistan dried up in less than a month after the monsoon and the groundwater didn’t sweeten.”



Left with no other option, as the supply through the water tankers is also not affordable, the villagers dig surface holes a few feet deep to draw muddy saline water. They remove the mud by passing the water through a clean piece of cloth wrapped over an earthen water pot.

Laboratory reports of the water samples collected by The Express Tribune during the visit to Kohistan show significant levels of harmful chemicals. The total dissolved solids (TDS) have been found up to 10,060 milligram per litre. The World Health Organisation’s permissible limit for human consumption for the same is 500 mg/l. Similarly, the readings of calcium, chloride and magnesium are also far higher at 1,300 mg/l, 4,385 mg/l and 750 mg/l against the WHO’s standards of 200 mg/l, 250 mg/l and 100 mg/l, respectively.

“This water is very harmful for human health. It is not even fit for agriculture use, for which, up to 1,500 mg/l TDS is permissible,” says Dr Ahsan Siddiqui, a visiting faculty member at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology and Sindh University.

“This type of water increases blood pressure, causes enlargement of the heart and gastric ulcers. Chemical and bacteriological contamination in the water is a common cause of death in children,” explains Dr Salma Shaikh, the head of paediatrics department at Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences.

According to Dr Siddiqui, the feasible solution for Kohistan’s water issue is installing filtration plants with reverse osmosis or electrostatic process technologies. These plants, which can cost up to Rs2.5 million, will purify the boring water.

The villages in Kohistan largely comprise katcha houses or huts, dwarfed by the mountains surrounding them. PHOTOS COURTESY: PAKISTAN RELIEF FOUNDATION

Too little, too late

The Deputy Commissioner of Jamshoro, Sohail Adeeb Bachani, has asked the provincial government to declare famine in the district’s mountainous talukas of Thana Bulla Khan and Mannjhand. According to him, the seasonal crops have been badly damaged and people are suffering from acute water shortage. The government has, however, yet to respond to his request.

“In Tharparkar, we saw the Sindh government respond only when hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the famine and hundreds of lives were lost,” says PRF’s chairperson and former relief adviser, Haleem Adil Shaikh. “The same seems to be happening in Kohistan.” He gave the example of how the Sindh government did not take seriously the December 13, 2013, letter of Tharparkar’s DC to declare his district as drought-hit. The status was given two and a half months later on February 28.

With low rainfall last year, most fresh water sources have already ran dry, while the brackish water is taking a toll on people. “When the pastures don’t grow abundantly, the flock begins eating toxic bushes that make them sick or even kills them,” says herdsman, Allahndo Khaskheli, of Bachayo Khaskheli village. He claimed that hundreds of livestock have died over the last few months, predicting even more deaths during the next three to four months of summer.

The district administration of Thatta, however, has still not sought drought status. This is despite DC Agha Shahnawaz Babur’s direction to the health and agriculture officials to take preventive steps on an emergency basis in the district’s Jhimpir, Jhirk, Ongar and Jungshahi towns.

The children of the region are the most affected by the harsh living condition. Several have developed deformities while many have died in the last three months.

Small houses amid huge mountains

In Sindh, the mountainous land of Kirthar range is referred to as Kohistan or Kaccho. The range stretches from Karachi to Qambar-Shadadkot district in Sindh, before entering Balochistan. It passes through Thatta, Jamshoro and Dadu districts. Kohistan refers to the mountain in Thatta and Jamshoro districts.

It comprises hundreds of villages, which are a collection of huts and kutcha houses dwarfed by lumps of rock. Although heavy transmission wires pass through this region, the villages have yet to be connected to the power grid. They do not get gas supply either.

“Two years ago, electric polls were fixed in our village by former MNA Sadiq Memon, but we have yet to receive electric supply,” says Qasim Shoro, who lives in village Muhammad Ibrahim Shoro near Darawat dam.

The whole area depends on rainwater for the sustenance of the people and their animals. The locals subsist on livestock, mainly small animals, such as goats and sheep, as their prime livelihood. But this too depends on rainfall as the animals graze in the pastures. The rain-dependent crops and stone picking and crushing are their secondary, albeit occasional, sources of income.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2014.