LARKANA, Aug 30: Around 10,000 acres of barren land near Phulpota village can be cultivated if escaped water of Dadu Canal is channelised, said Mumtaz Bhutto, Chairman Sindh National Front (SNF), on Thursday.

This came to knowledge when the SNF chief took a team of journalists to the site where an ‘escape’ was dug in 1969 to control overflow which according to him was responsible for wasting about 200 cusecs of water on permanent basis.

Instead of digging a small tributary to channelise water and irrigate some 10,000 acres, the same was being released into River Indus, he said.

Even the Sindh Chief Minister Arbab Rahim visited the area for proper utilisation of irrigation water, he added. When Benazir Bhutto come to know of the proposal she sent Khursheed Junejo to the CM which resulted in dropping of new offshoot plan, he said. A rigid anti-people stance taken by Benazir Bhutto was the only obstacle coming in way of materialisation of plan rendering thousands of acres useless, he said.

Water inundating hundreds of acres of area land was evident which Mumtaz Bhutto said was a permanent phenomenon as it was coming from ‘escape’ of Dadu Canal and instead of being utilised it was going waste.

He pointed towards the submerged land at the Burira village which he said now was only 700 acres while during the period of land reforms it was about 18,000 acres.

Going deep down to ‘Kutcha’ in Deh Doso Dara village ‘Manzilgah’, he said dacoits were comfortably living there. “Gangs of Mubeen Narijo and Sado Narejo are surviving under the nose of District Police Officer Larkana. The DPO regularly visits this forest and has developed friendly links with dacoits who roam freely in the area committing crimes”, said Mumtaz Bhutto. They kidnap and keep people here while the ‘trade’ goes on with police sitting idle he said and added: “More than 200 criminals are living in this forest and Nazro Narejo has even established his Ketti.”

He said it was quite uncalled for and unjustified that Ms Benazir Bhutto was opposing a new irrigation channel to cultivate 10,000 acres of land though water was unnecessarily being flown into River. It inflicts colossal loss on growers and small khatidars whose patches of lands were being destroyed. Though we have tubewells to irrigate land but the question arises: Why growers were being punished?

Standing at abandoned Police Station ‘Ketti Mumtaz’ he said police had vacated it before 1997 when five persons were kidnapped and two killed. Since then police had left this building and reside at the Railway Station Shahnawaz Bhutto leaving people at the mercy of bandits and criminals who had established their hideouts in kutcha of this area.