Kashmir faces another flood disaster due to govt negligence: PDP’s Zaffer Mir

Srinagar, Aug 25: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) senior leader Zaffer Mir (Lasjan) on Monday slammed the government for what he called “a decade of unforgivable betrayal” that has left Kashmir exposed to another flood disaster of 2014 proportions.He said the scars of the 2014 deluge, which drowned districts, claimed hundreds of lives and caused destruction worth thousands of crores, are still fresh. Yet eleven years later, not a single meaningful step has been taken to protect people from the same tragedy repeating itself. “Today, the Valley is even more vulnerable than it was in 2014. This is not just negligence, this is criminal indifference,” Zaffer said in a statement issued here. “For over a decade, the administration has abandoned its most basic duty of disaster preparedness.”He exposed what he called a chilling pattern of apathy that has reduced Kashmir’s flood defences to rubble. “For ten years, no flood channel has been cleaned, silt lies untouched, riverbeds remain weak, and the drainage system is choked. Experts have sounded alarm after alarm, yet the rulers sit idle. One heavy spell of rain is enough to drown us again,” he warned.Calling the neglect of dredging along the Jhelum and its tributaries the most dangerous failure, Zaffer said the very waterways that decide the Valley’s survival have been left to decay. “This negligence has turned manageable seasonal water into a ticking time bomb,” he said.The PDP leader warned that Kashmir is living on borrowed time. “Each day wasted pushes us closer to a calamity worse than 2014,” he said, demanding that the government convene an emergency meeting to immediately restore the Jhelum and its tributaries before it is too late.  “Flood channels must be restored now. The window for preventive action is closing fast, and another delay will be nothing short of sabotage,” he said.Criticising Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Zaffer lambasted what he described as a reckless culture of firefighting after the damage is already done. “The government issues alerts when disaster is at the door. That is like digging a well when the fire is already lit,” he said, accusing the administration of deliberately gambling with people’s lives.