|
Over 80 per cent of underground water in Sindh toxic: VC Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam
HYDERABAD, Sept 6: The vice-chancellor of the Sindh Agriculture
University Tandojam, Dr Bashir Ahmed Shaikh, has revealed that 80 to 90 per cent
of underground water in Sindh has become poisonous due to a variety of
reasons.
The vi-chancellor said while speaking to growers at a training
programme organised by the university on "proper use of water and land resources
for poverty alleviation" on Tuesday that by 2025, the country's population could
shot up to 300 million, which would lead to poverty, hunger and unemployment and
an added burden on the limited resources.
If the government failed to
control the sale of poisonous and substandard pesticides, seeds and fertilisers,
the fertile agricultural land of the province would also become barren, he
warned.
Dr Shaikh urged the government to formulate comprehensive
policies and implement them in letter and spirit to check this menace. Improper
use of water and lack of use of the latest agricultural technology had compelled
the country to import sugar, wheat, pulses and other edibles.
He pleaded
for judicious distribution of water to meet shortages and suggested that instead
of big dams, the government should go for small dams for the storage of water
and introduce bio-saline agriculture.
The dean of Engineering Faculty, Dr
Mohammad Saleh Soomro, said that the growers had failed to use land resources in
a proper manner, which had led to low productivity and loss of fertility. The
use of poisonous pesticides and insecticides had harmed the environment as well,
he added.
The farmers' ignorance of the latest agricultural machinery had
destroyed the land level and resulted in wastage of water. Besides, the overuse
of water had rendered the land saline, he said.
Irrigation and drainage
expert, Dr Nisar Ahmed Memon, said that the mineral contents in land in Sindh
had dropped from 5 per cent to 0.5 per cent, which suggested that the land was
fast losing its productivity.
Dr Ghulam Haider Jamro said that the
uninterrupted use of poisonous pesticides and insecticides had become so
widespread that even the womenfolk picking cotton had contracted many skin
diseases after the poison had permeated their body cells. The milk was also
becoming toxic as the animals were eating the same pesticides infected grass, he
warned.
CCNA COURSE: The CISCO (USA) had established a local
academy at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies of the
Mehran University to start CISCO Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and other
state-of-the-art courses of networking, said the director of the Institute Dr.
Abdul Karim Baloch on Wednesday.
He said at the launching ceremony of
CCNA-I Course that a state-of-the-art networking lab had been established at the
institute to produce skilled manpower in the field of
networking.
INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR: The National Centre of
Excellence in Analytical Chemistry (NCEAC) of the University of Sindh would
organise a three-day second International Seminar on Analytical Sciences
commencing on Sept 6 at Hostel Indus Hyderabad.
A large number of
scholars from the universities and research organisations of the country and a
number of scholars from the universities of Greece, Turkey, Bangladesh, South
Africa, India and Iran would attend the seminar. Dawn
|
