THE Chamber of Commerce and Industries’ meeting was recently held at which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried to pressure Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah to agree on sharing water with Islamabad.

The facts are: when a separate quota of water for Karachi was demanded in the past, Sindh was asked to meet the needs from its own quota though a large number of people from other provinces reside there.

Now instead of meeting Islamabad’s water need through Punjab, the three other provinces are being pressured to share water.

People of Sindh fail to understand that when it was agreed in the Water Accord, 1991, to meet the mandatory requirement of releasing water downstream Kotri, it wasn’t being implemented after the signing on the accord 23 years ago because of unjustified objection from Punjab.

As a result, the Indus delta -– the sixth largest in the world — has been ruined and an environmental disaster has emerged in Sindh: 2.6m people residing in the area between Kotri and Arabian Sea are dying of hunger and thirst, whereas the sea intrusion has already inundated 2.7 million acres of land in the two districts of Sindh, i.e. Badin and Thatta, which do not receive fresh water to push sea water back as per practice.

I hope Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gives importance to genuine issues of Sindh on a priority basis.

Mohammad Khan Sial

Karachi