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AWP leads protest against water shortage

Friday 7 October 2016

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Scores of farmers and other citizens on Tuesday September 27 rallied behind the call of the Awami Workers Party (AWP) to highlight their issues.

The rally started from the grain market and the participants, who were chanting slogans and carrying AWP’s flags, marched through city roads and reached Shahbaz Chowk, where a public meeting was held.

AWP Secretary-General Farooq Tariq said the citizens had been deprived of clean water due to shortage. The canal water supply was not feeding farmlands in the villages as the district was situated at tail ends of both Gogera and Jhang branches of the canal, he said.

He said the elected representatives of the PML-N had made a promise in the 2013 general elections that water shortage would be over within a year and a pipeline from Head Trimmu to the city would be completed soon but nothing significant had happened so far. The pipeline project has not been completed in the last several years.

He said the tail-end villages of the district were facing water shortage and the crops were being destroyed resulting in great financial loss to the growers for which the irrigation department was responsible. He demanded action against the department functionaries for their negligence.

The government, he alleged, was spending the development funds meant for districts on the Orange Line Train Project in Lahore. It had failed to solve the basic issues of Toba Tek Singh, he said.

The AWP leader praised police for arresting suspects and those involved in criminal activities.

AWP district president Chaudhry Muhammad Zubair demanded action against the jail officials who are allegedly stealing water from the canal for irrigating farmland and embezzling the budget meant to provide food to the prisoners.

Mr Zubair sought suspension of the Chutiana police SHO who, he alleged, was implicating workers and peasants in fictitious cases.

Dawn