Death Toll Mounts Around Pakistan's Manchar Lake

KARACHI, Pakistan, May 27, 2004 (ENS) - Nineteen people have died and at least 1,600 are ill after drinking contaminated water released into the Indus River from Manchar Lake in southern Pakistan. Three children are among the fatalities, which affected the cities of Hyderabad and Thatta and villages around Pakistan's largest lake.

The contaminated water is supplied by a state-run water agency, which gets the water from Manchar Lake, outside Hyderabad, in Pakistan's southern Sindh province 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of the port city Karachi. The source of contamination is not known, and two official investigations are underway.

Doctors are warning people in the city of Hyderabad to drink only boiled water, and provincial health experts as well as the World Health Organization are separately writing reports after taking water samples from the lake.

Dr. Hadi Bakhsh with the main Hyderabad hospital said people suffering from diarrhea began arriving at the hospital May 10.

Jhangara Union Council Nazim Syed Zahid Hussain Shah claimed on Sunday that many more people have died from the contamination than has been reported in the local media. Briefing journalists at the press club in Dadu, he told the "Dawn" newspaper that the victims are Manchar Lake fishermen and people from the villages of four union councils, Bubak, Jhangara, Chhinni and Channa.

Manchar is the largest shallow water natural lake in South Asia. (Photo courtesy Dadu District)

Head of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians Makhdoom Amin Fahim is blaming the government for the deaths. In a statement issued from Bilawal House in Karachi Monday, the PPP leader called for a judicial commission headed by a senior judge to probe the incident.

Fahim said the health of many people is at risk, but the government has taken no appropriate steps for providing proper medical aid, nor have any positive steps been taken for stopping the release of contaminated water, he claimed.

He said that in Hyderabad, Thatta, Sehwan and other areas, a large number of affected people are coming to the Civil Hospital in Hyderabad, Preetabad government hospital and other hospitals but regretted that they were not being provided adequate medical treatment.

The government claims that fresh water has reached the Kotri barrage and people have been stopped from flushing contaminated water from Manchar Lake. But Fahim says contaminated water has not yet been flushed out of several canals in Thatta and other areas.

Local fishermen have been warning about contamination in Manchar Lake for years. Last July, fisherman Ghulam Mustafa Mirani said at a dialogue on Manchar Lake at Islamabad's Sustainable Development Policy Institute, "The lake has become an agricultural waste dump for those living upstream."

Meanwhile, on Wednesday the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) jointly authorized a project to provide access to a safe water supply, improved sanitation and natural resources management in Punjab and Sindh.

The project is the first ever joint program by the two United Nations agencies in Pakistan.

The signing ceremony was held at the United Nations office in Karachi on Monday. The documents were signed by the UNICEF representative, Omar Abdi and UNDP resident representative, Onder Yucer.

The program will provide a grant of US$428,000 for implementation of water, sanitation and natural resources projects in Punjab and Sindh under UNICEF and the UNDP Small Grants Programme.

The project aims at community mobilization for reducing water contamination through rational use of chemicals and remediation to remove arsenic from the water supply in selected schools. At least 250,000 people are expected to benefit.

The UN agencies plan to work jointly with the Ministry of Science and Technology and local governments to install 240 water treatment plants.