KARACHI - Complying with the Sindh water commission directives, the provincial home department wrote a letter to the Director General Sindh Rangers to provide security to stop water theft and tampering with modules in different districts of the province.
On the request of the irrigation department of Sindh, the home department wrote to the DG Rangers for the deployments to the canals to curb water theft and other irregularities in the distribution of water in irrigation system.
The DG Rangers Sindh was also requested to appoint a focal person to coordinate with the focal person of the irrigation department in order to work out the modalities and mechanism of the rangers’ assistance to the irrigating department. Earlier, the Supreme Court-constituted Water Commission took notice over complaints of water theft and tampering with modules in different districts of the province, and issued direction for the security measures to stop water theft across the province.
In the last proceeding of the commission, the Chairman of Task Force Jamal Mustafa Syed, who is also irrigation secretary, submitted that there were more than 500 letters which were addressed to the police by various officials of the irrigation department requesting them to take action against the stealing of irrigation water or tampering with modules, but the police were not cooperating as per the law.
He further submitted that even if FIRs were registered on the basis of the letters by SHOs, no arrest was made. The commission directed Inspector General of Police to take up the issue with all the SSPs of the districts with clear directions that in future if SHOs failed to register FIRs, action would be taken against the SSP concerned, and if need be the matter would be referred to the Supreme Court for initiating proceedings against those SSPs.
It directed the IGP to issue a notification directing all SSPs to issue appropriate instructions to the SHOs for immediately lodging FIRs on the complaints issued by various officials of the irrigation department for taking action against the culprits.
