Daily Times

KARACHI: Large numbers of the people from Thar Desert held a protest demonstration outside Karachi Press Club on Thursday to protest against Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) and said that the company is destroying their agricultural fields and also damaging ecosystem.

They were carrying placards and were chanting slogans against the coal company.

Talking to Daily Times, Leela Ram, one of the petitioners from Thar Desert who had filled a petition recently against the SECMC said that the mining company is posing serious threats to the locals in Thar Desert. The coal company has planned a wastewater reservoir in village Gorano, near Thar Coal Site, to dump the ground water that will be exerted during the mining.

“The company during excavation, exerts huge amount of ground water that will be dumped over 2,700 acres of cultivatable land and forest, which will directly affect 15 major villages with 15,000 people, 200,000 trees that would will die and all these people will have to migrate from their native villages,” said Leela Ram.

He said that around 12 major villages will be destroyed completely due to the dumping of the wastewater. “We demand to change the site of the wastewater dumping reservoir from this area to another.

However, on contact, CEO SECMC, Shaikh rejected the claims of the villagers and said his company would only use 1,400 acres for two reservoirs to store the water extracted during excavation. “It will be natural underground saline water, not toxic or poisonous in any way and it will not affect any village,” he claimed.

The villagers said that if the water is dumped, it will destroy the fertile agricultural land, which is major source of livelihood, beside livestock for locals. “Thar Desert is already suffering with acute water shortage and severe droughts and since the company will start dumping wastewater, it will be very destructive for the locals,” said another protester.

Locals are afraid that the company will extract huge amounts of groundwater for coal excavation, a region where groundwater level is dropping in some areas by 2 meters a year and has fallen to 100 meters deep in some places due to prolonged drought. Drought in the desert has led to the death of more than 3,000 children in the past three years, although authorities have admitted only 828 deaths.

The protesting villagers also alleged that the coal company has chopped large number of the indigenous trees and despite several promises the company is doing nothing to restore the local forests.

“We used to avail the leaves of these local trees as fodder for our animals and but now company is planting alien spices like Conocarpus on the name of reforestation, which will bring another disaster in near future,” said the villagers.

They demanded the government of take action against the company and help the villagers.