THATTA: An inquiry has been ordered into what was officially described as `active and severe erosion` that caused considerable damage to the S.M. Monarki bund in Sujawal district on Sunday.

Serving as the vital shield to protect Sujawal town just six kilometres away andscores ofvillagesaround it, the S.M. Monarki bund developed a breach on Sunday morning due to immense pressure of floodwater flowing in the Indus at a discharge of around 350,000 cusec. Within hours after the spillage started flooding the farmlands and villages on its way towards Sujawal, the breach at the 46-Mile section of the bund widened to over 450 feet posing a serious threat of flood to vast areas including Sujawal town.

The breach caused an alarm across the district and hundreds of panicked peopie rushed to the site to plug the breach and protect theirproperties from inundation.

Top district and irrigation officials, as well as political ñgures of the area, also reached the site to supervise the plugging work, carried out on an emergency basis whole the night.

Taking notice of the breach, Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah issued special directives for an inquiry into the breach amid widespread complaints about substandard material used and poor quality works carried out recently for the strengthening of the bund at a cost of Rs700 million.

In compliance with the CM`s special directives, a committee comprising two technocrats, Idrees Rajput and Bashir Ahmed Dahar, was on Tuesday assigned the task of looking into the active and severe erosion causedby the breach.

The committee had been asked to submit its report within a week, he said, adding that the technocrats were also supposed to recommend measures for strengthening the ruptured portion of the bund.Irrigation Secretary Syed Zaheer Haider Shah visited the breach site and discussed the cause of such a serious erosion with senior officials of his department as well as other experts. Later, he told Dawn that the `negligence on the part of the of5cials and employees concerned` could not be ruled out. He argued that the erosion of the bund`s 46-Mile section could not be blamed on floodwater pressure alone.

He said that Lower Pinyari division executive engineer Haider Khuwaja had already been placed under suspension to facili-tate the inquiry and the charge of his office had been given to the Thatta executive engineer.

Provincial Minister Mohammed Ali Malkani also visited the site and inspected the damaged section of the dyke. He directed the ofñcials concern to ensure early completion of the plugging work.

He observed that `criminal negligence by irrigation officials and ineligible and corrupt bureaucrats` seemed to be behind the dyke erosion, and said that the deluge might have unleashed a disaster had the discharge in the Indus at thetime of the breach been at its peak as it was about a week earlier.

`Govt defrauded` Local people including some irrigation experts privy to the recent bund strengthening work speaking to the media said that the contractor had undertaken to use steel plates or German origin for which he put the estimate of the works at Rs700 million.

However, the plates fixed during the work appeared to be of local origin (made in Lahore) and failed to withstand the floodwater pres-sure, they claimed.

Meanwhile, floodwater which had inundated vast katcha area and scores of villages in Sujawal district on Sunday has started receding.

The situation has, however, not normalised to an extent that the families displaced by the flooding could return to their houses.

The families are staying on highlands and assemble on Thatta-Sujawal road once in a day to block it for a couple of hours demanding provision of food, water and other essential relief goods as well as their early rehabilitation.