BADIN, May 27: People in villages and towns along the coastal belt of the district live in constant fear of a repeat of 1999 and 2005 cyclones and many have started migrating to safer areas with the onset of monsoon season.The strong winds slapping the area for a week have become a harbinger of the calamity, more manmade than natural, following the failure of Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD), which wrecks havoc in the area each year by causing sea intrusion and turning shallow ground water aquifers saline.

The Sindh Drainage and LBOD officials who are responsible for repairing the weak points in the drain claimed that no new land had come under seawater except 30 kilometres coastal area, which had been eaten away by seawater within 20 years up till 2003.

They said that Badin could be saved after construction of guide banks and outfall structure. The executive engineer of drainage and LBOD, Khair Mohammad Dahiri, said that Rs40 million had been spent on repair, stone pitching and strengthening of the drain’s banks this year.

He said that the Wapda handed over the management of faulty drain to the Irrigation department a few years ago after the project’s Cholri weir had collapsed, wrecking havoc on local population.

He said that they had identified more than 15 vulnerable points and work on the construction of 14 inlets at a cost of more than Rs200,000 each was going on.

But the villagers of the coastal belt, Mohammad Khan Lund, Mahi Mandhro and others did not agree with the official claims. They accused the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority of criminal lethargy and said the work on the reinforcement of the drain’s remaining embankments was too little and too late.

They had been in a state of sonorous slumber throughout the year and woke up just a month before the cyclone and flood season to construct inlets and repair weak points.They alleged the quality of stone-pitching made on the outer side of the drain’s embankment was substandard. The digging of pakka spill of LBOD banks for the construction of inlets was too risky during floods, they said.

On Tuesday, a team comprising DCO Agha Wasif Abbas, EDO of revenue Dr Kazim Jatoi, EDO of works and services Mohammad Ali, DDO and administrative officer of district nazim, Bashir Qureshi, journalists and landlords visited the LBOD to inspect the weak spots.

The DCO told journalists that the team had learnt about the factual position of the drain and decided to take steps for the betterment of people.

The executive engineer, Mr Dahiri, said that no repair had been carried out of the DPOD for years. More than 55 sub-drains, field drains and a large number of inlets were draining out saline water from the fields into the main drain.

The team expressed displeasure over the drain’s condition and termed it unsatisfactory and the DCO said that the administration was ready to meet eventuality during monsoon season and a plan was being prepared for the protection of people’s lives and property.

People of Badin district demanded permanent steps for protection of their lives, lands and properties and said that temporary repair work and maintenance was not beneficial at all. They said that there were many vulnerable points along the LBOD banks that could repeat past tragedies.

The World Bank’s inspection had acknowledged that the LBOD, the tidal link and Cholri weir contained design faults and their construction had led to sea intrusion and badly affected the ecology and livelihood in Badin and southern Sindh, according to the bank’s report on the 25-year $785 million National Drainage Programme in Pakistan.

The LBOD system combined with the destruction of the tidal link increased risks for local people. The situation was particularly bad when heavy rainfalls at inland and high tides and strong at sea coincided.

Perhaps the largest drainage programme in Asia, the LBOD stage-I costing Rs23,432 million was launched with the credit and grants of eight foreign donor agencies to control ground water levels at an area of 1.27 million acres in Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpurkhas districts to alleviate waterlogging and salinity and make the agriculture lands productive.

Different drainage technologies were used to pump saline ground water into a network of surface drains, which discharged the saline water into major drainage channel, the spinal drain, which ran nearly 200 miles away from its head near Shahdadpur in Sanghar district to Zero Point in the south of Serani of Badin district.

At this point, a 42-kilometre long channel known as the tidal link was constructed to flow the saline water to the head of Shah Sando creek, an active tidal creek, which provides final passage to saline water from the project area to the Arabian Sea.

The tidal link goes through two of the four lakes of area which are connected to each other and play an important role in the wetland ecosystem. A weir is constructed, connecting Cholri Lake to the tidal link, to maintain water level in the lakes at an average level equivalent to the previous season’s maximum level.

During high tide, water flows from the tidal link into Cholri lake towards the tidal link and ultimately to the Arabian Sea. The design of the tidal link was prepared by a British firm. The project began operation in June 1995, but a major portion of Cholri weir collapsed in June 1998.Meanwhile, during its first operation during monsoon rains in 1995, breaches occurred at many places and drain water overflowed the banks into the fertile lands.

During the design and construction of the project, it was not considered that the drain flow was opposite to the natural flow and wind direction and in the coastal belt the storm wind reduces the velocity of the drain considerably and the waves eroded the bed and the inspection path of the bank of tidal link, which affected the project.

The LBOD carries saline water into the spinal drain through its main outfall channels (MOFC) i.e. Kadhan Pateji Outfall Drain (KPOD), Dhoro Puran Outfall Drain (DPOD) and tidal link having a length of 35.22, 23.5 miles with a capacity of 3,000, 2,000 and 3,500 cusec, respectively.