HYDERABAD, Sept 5: The vice-chancellor of the Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, Dr Bashir Ahmed Shaikh, has revealed that 80 to 90 per cent of underground water in Sindh has become poisonous due to a variety of reasons.

The vi-chancellor said while speaking to growers at a training programme organised by the university on “proper use of water and land resources for poverty alleviation” on Tuesday that by 2025, the country’s population could shot up to 300 million, which would lead to poverty, hunger and unemployment and an added burden on the limited resources.

If the government failed to control the sale of poisonous and substandard pesticides, seeds and fertilisers, the fertile agricultural land of the province would also become barren, he warned.

Dr Shaikh urged the government to formulate comprehensive policies and implement them in letter and spirit to check this menace. Improper use of water and lack of use of the latest agricultural technology had compelled the country to import sugar, wheat, pulses and other edibles.

He pleaded for judicious distribution of water to meet shortages and suggested that instead of big dams, the government should go for small dams for the storage of water and introduce bio-saline agriculture.

The dean of Engineering Faculty, Dr Mohammad Saleh Soomro, said that the growers had failed to use land resources in a proper manner, which had led to low productivity and loss of fertility. The use of poisonous pesticides and insecticides had harmed the environment as well, he added.

The farmers’ ignorance of the latest agricultural machinery had destroyed the land level and resulted in wastage of water. Besides, the overuse of water had rendered the land saline, he said.

Irrigation and drainage expert, Dr Nisar Ahmed Memon, said that the mineral contents in land in Sindh had dropped from 5 per cent to 0.5 per cent, which suggested that the land was fast losing its productivity.

Dr Ghulam Haider Jamro said that the uninterrupted use of poisonous pesticides and insecticides had become so widespread that even the womenfolk picking cotton had contracted many skin diseases after the poison had permeated their body cells. The milk was also becoming toxic as the animals were eating the same pesticides infected grass, he warned.

CCNA COURSE: The CISCO (USA) had established a local academy at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies of the Mehran University to start CISCO Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and other state-of-the-art courses of networking, said the director of the Institute Dr. Abdul Karim Baloch on Wednesday.