Khawaja Zaheer Ahmed - PDMA

2010 Flood season would ‘inflict colossal damage to life &
property’; to put it in most mild terms, the contention that the PC-I
was approved in principle but not funded, confirms additional gross
negligence to take timely corrective measures; nothing could lead
this Commission to conclude otherwise.
b. Secondly, the admission by the C. E. Guddu Barrage that almost
70 inches of the Bund height, almost entire six feet prescribed
freeboard above 1976 HFL, had eroded due to non-maintenance, is
materially relevant though he used that plea only as a last resort to
blame history.
c. Thirdly, the record of the post-Flood IRC meeting [Item 85 of the
meeting dated 1 4th October 2010 for Rs. 103.727 Million] that
narrates scraping of earth from Tori crest on 6/ 7th August to fill the
Garrahs on the river side; this impugned departmental action
explains the big ditch on the CD captured by media as also the
evidence of the brave men who witnessed on midnight of 6/ 7th
August presence of an ‘Excavator’, captured live shots of the ditch
stealthily after removing the earth from the crest of worn out bund,
and what they considered as an attempt to breach the Tori Bund.
d. Fourthly, from the evidence that 2010 Flood in Sindh was below
the1976 Flood levels that reached Guddu on 6/7 th August. On 14 th
March, 2011 the Commission noted the HFL mark of August 2010
floods at some lengths of the dilapidated houses on Tori Bund,
below the designed crest level.
e. Fifthly, the number of schemes and estimated costs of
rehabilitation amounting to over 61.0 billion mooted in the 2-3
meetings of the IRC, in October 2010 and later, established beyond
doubt about the poor state of maintenance of the bunds, including
Tori and its secondary loop bunds or those in Thatta required a
professional indepth probe.
Page 146 of 211