Criminal flooding

The pictures and videos of dead bodies floating in the flood water and thousands of people stuck without shelter, food, and emergency medicines, are absolutely soul-shattering. Entire villages have drowned and people have nowhere to go. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of acres of cultivated crops have been destroyed, and most of the food storage in every district is badly affected or completely lost due to the floods. New food insecurity and price hikes await.

Every year we face floods and other natural disasters but, unfortunately, we never learn to control and manage floods. For decades, we have debated building larger dams but have failed to build smaller dams and water reservoirs, especially in Balochistan. We need to learn from the rest of the world. For instance, China mitigates the risk of flooding in its Yangtze River basin by building dikes and dams along the riverside. No doubt climate change and natural disasters are a reality, but we cannot shut our eyes to the criminal negligence of politicians and government policymakers. We need a judicial enquiry into this disaster that identifies the culprits and punishes them accordingly

Fayyaz Salih Hussain

Karachi