KARACHI: While Pakistan’s southern Sindh province remains busy with safety precautions as it braces for floods heading downstream from Punjab, farmers in the province’s coastal district await the arrival of river water, saying it would prevent the sea from swallowing their lands and provide better catch for fishers.
Devastating floods in Punjab have killed 43 and displaced more than 1.3 million people in the last 10 days, authorities have said. Excess releases from Indian dams and heavy monsoon showers have destroyed crops in Punjab, caused rivers to swell and affected more than 3.6 million people.
But as the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) warns that floods heading downstream may cause similar devastation in Sindh, Gulab Shah, a 52-year-old farmer from Jhaloo village near the coastal town of Keti Bunder in Thatta district, waits for the river water to arrive.
Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in Sindh, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities.
“Our ancestors have lived here for centuries,” Shah told Arab News. “There was a time when we owned thousands of acres of land, but due to the drying up of the delta, the sea has swallowed it all.”
