QUETTA: At least 15,000 people were rendered homeless after torrential rain caused a breach in the under-construction Damani dam in the Barkhan district on Wednesday night.
More than a dozen villages in the district are reported to have been submerged by the water gushing out of the reservoir. According to reports reaching here, over 1,200 hectares of agricultural land has been inundated.
The dam is located around 17km from Barkhan. ‘The government has shifted the affected people to safe places and lunched a relief operation,’ Barkhan’s District Nazim Habibullah Khetran told Dawn.
There was no casualty because people began moving out of their villages when the reservoir started overflowing, he added.
Balochistan Chief Minister Aslam Raisani has asked the provincial disaster management authority to step up efforts to provide relief goods to the affected people.
‘Heavy monsoon rains are continuing in a vast area of northern Balochistan,’ a local administration official said.
A spokesman of the provincial irrigation department said a 25- to 30-foot breach had developed in the dam. He held the project’s contractor responsible for the breach.
Loralai Commissioner Haider Ali Shikoh said rescue and health teams had been sent to the area to provide help to the affected people.However, local people are complaining that they are still without shelter and food.
One of them, Raza Khetran, told Dawn on telephone that most of the affected people had spent a sleepless night in the open and the government had not provided anything to them so far.
By Saleem Shahid
Friday, 24 Jul, 2009
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/d ... ess+in+balochistan--bi-06
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