LARKANA: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said that the issue of six canals has not even been tabled at the ECNEC or any other relevant forums and hence Sindh is raising its voice against it, which should be heard.

Mr Khuhro said at a press conference at Larkana Press Club on Wednesday that the new canals would certainly get water from Indus River but where would they get water from when the Indus River System Authority had already pointed out water shortage in the system.

He said that in civilian governments, all decisions were routed through DDWP, CDWP, ECNEC, NEC and CCI. But the issue of canals was not even tabled in the ECNEC or any other forums, he said.

Mr Khuhro, who also heads the Public Accounts Committee of Sindh Assembly, called on the fed-eral government to restart construction of the remaining portion of Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD) on which work had started in 2021 at a cost of Rs14 billion.

The work on the RBOD had been stalled since 2016, he said and asked the centre to pump funds to complete the project. Sea was fast eroding vast patches of land in Thatta, Badin, Sujawal, Sanghar and other areas due to water scarcity, he said.

He disclosed that sea had swallowed up 3.6 million fertile land and stressed completing RBOD and repairing Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD).

He said that rise in population and shrinkage of fertile land could seriously threaten `food security`.

Irsa had failed to implement the Water Apportionment Accord, he said.

He cited Prime Minister`s claim that inflation had downed by three per cent and said the end sufferer was the population connected with agriculture that bore the brunt of soaring prices.He said that peasants, growers and agriculture had been left at the mercy of market which had given birth to a host of difficulties for them. The government had not hence fixed support price of wheat, paddy, cotton or other crops, he said.

He urged the government and private entrepreneurs not to import wheat in future and criticised fixing separate support prices for wheat in Sindh and Punjab.

He claimed that due to climate change the rice production had reduced by half. Rice was a cash crop which earned foreign exchange but this time the forex earning would go down by 50 per cent, he said.

He said that it was a cumulative economic loss where the role of middlemen was disastrous for agriculture.

Khuhro was unhappy over what he called snail`s pace progress on the construction of houses for the construction of houses for flood-hit people.