Islamabad:
The Permanent Committee of the Senate on Water Resources expressed a serious concern for the increase in the death of the floods of the monsoon, blaming the unplanned construction and poor water management for worsening the crisis.
Chaired by Senator Sherry Rehman, the Committee criticized the lack of planning in the construction of housing societies in natural water channels and realized the recent flood in the Aldea de Islamabad, and the drowning of a man and daughter.
During the meeting, Rehman interrogated the officials of the Ministry of Water Resources for not providing data on subway wells, availability of groundwater and national water use. She questioned how the ministry could not map the extraction of groundwater or even estimate the number of tube wells in the country.
Between June 26 and July 22, 242 people lost their lives and almost 600 were injured in incidents related to flooding, Rehman told the committee, adding that 21 of those deaths occurred only in the last 24 hours.
“This is not an occasional disaster: it is a continuous fall in climate change. Pakistan is the most vulnerable country to the climate of the world,” he said. “Calling these incidents to natural disasters changes the fault of human negligence.”
He called “man -made” destruction, derived from bad planning, construction not regulated in river paths and lack of action in climatic warnings. The president expressed alarm due to the lack of an early warning system and the absence of rainwater storage in national development plans.
Rehman emphasized that provincial and district administrations improve flood warning systems and regulate groundwater. He also demanded that housing regulatory agencies submit a report on the recent drowning incident in a private housing society.
The chair also expressed concern about the worsening of the water crisis in Baluchistan and Chitral, where the earth is becoming sterile after each monsoon. He requested updated plans on groundwater recharge and the regulation of tube wells in the next session.
Talking to journalists after the meeting, Rehman said Sindh and Punjab were also running out of groundwater. “Our neighbors, Afghanistan and Iran, face a water emergency. The modi government threatens to block our water, he said, added that” we must be prepared. “
The senator criticized the construction without control in the natural river paths, citing the Saidpur village in Islamabad and Dha Rawalpindi as examples in which the unplanned development contributed directly to the destruction and loss of lives. “We can no longer call this a natural disaster. These are human -induced disasters, driven by bad planning and climatic inaction,” he emphasized.
The search operations, he added, are still ongoing for a father and daughter swept in Dha Rawalpindi. He also recommended restricting tourism in Gilgit-Baltistan.
An important part of the meeting focused on groundwater resources decreasing from the country. The officials admitted that no ministry had a complete map or data on groundwater extraction or surface water consumption. Senator Rehman described the absence of data and the planning of a “totally fragmented and inappropriate” response, particularly in a country declared “water scarce” by the United Nations this year.
