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Water crises & management:
Committee formed to streamline water resources
HYDERABAD -Provincial Agriculture
Minister Hassan Ali Chaniho has said that a committee of
experts has been constituted to prepare comprehensive plans
for streamlining the management of existing water resources to
offset the losses of agriculture production causing negative
impact on rural economy of the province.
He was speaking at a seminar on "Water crises and Management"
organised by the Society for Health and Education Development
(SHED) at the auditorium of Sindh Museum on Friday evening.
Chaniho said the committee of experts besides assessing total
water resources of the country with particular reference to
Sindh province would evolve a methodology to minimise the
conveyance losses from barrage to barrage and barrage to
canals, and up to the farm gates.
The minister said that the installation of telemeters is in
progress and hoped that the system would be put into operation
by June this year and it would be connected with Internet by
next year, bringing an end to misunderstanding an unfounded
allegations injurious to national harmony.
Referring to a point raised by the speakers at the seminar,
the minister said the efforts are in progress to improve the
system for which President Musharraf has already granted a sum
of Rs 10 billion.
Chaniho said that the water flows from upper region to lower
region but the sowing of crop in Pakistan moves from lower to
upper region as such the water distribution schedule should be
made according to sowing periods of each ecological zone.
He said the Irsa headquarter has been shifted from Lahore to
Islamabad to remove the impression that since the Irsa
headquarter is in Lahore the Punjab government might influence
it. Moreover, Sindh has been given proper representation in
Irsa and the federal representative in Irsa is from Sindh and
by rotation the present chairman is also from Sindh. He said
Sindh would be given representation in top hierarchy of Water
and Power Development Authority (Wapda).
Dr Bashir Ahmed Chandio, Vice Chancellor, Sindh University of
Agriculture in his presidential address presented his study on
"Water, an imminent crises and its alternative planning" in
which he pointed out problems of existing irrigation system
including water logging and salinity, theft of canal water by
influential growers, over exploitation of fresh ground water,
inequitable distribution, inadequate maintenance, inefficient
recovery.
He said that the present population of Pakistan is 135 million
and increasing at more than 2.5 percent growth rate. He said
in order to be self-reliant in agriculture, both yields and
cropping intensity are to be increased and additional land is
to be brought under irrigation command. To achieve this
objective new alternatives should be worked out to stagger the
summer peaks and rejuvenation of silted reservoirs.
Dr Bashir said that till now full attention has been focused
on surface reservoirs though the ground water reservoir
(aquifer) has much more storage capability at lesser cost and
in environment friendly atmosphere. He said provision of
artificial recharge to ground water especially during the
floods should be made to compensate the total pumping with its
recharge.
He said advantages of subsurface over surface reservoirs
includes that the underground storage capacities remain
practically unaffected by silting, their yields are more
dependable than those from surface reservoirs. Ground water is
less prone to pollution than surface water, aquifers
practically have no competition for land uses, they can be put
to use with less risk of seepage or evaporation losses and the
cost of storing groundwater is less than that of surface
storage.
Earlier, former chief engineer, Sukkur Barrage Hafeez Shaikh
gave the two reasons for water shortage, one is less rains in
the upper catchments areas and secondly less snowfall which
led to less snow melting. But, he said, there are other
reasons too, which include fast growing population of Pakistan
and with increasing population and depleting water resources
Pakistan is fast heading towards a situation of water short
country.
The chief engineer, Kotri Barrage gave the latest figures of
water at reservoirs including inflow of river Kabul and water
levels of the three barrages in Sindh said that the water
situation has been considerably improved but 20 percent
shortage of water is expected during the ensuing Kharif
cropping season in the province.
Earlier, the speakers raised various issues including the
water sharing under 1991 Water Accord. They said in order to
implement Accord in letter and spirit sharing should be
carried out as per the allocation of the Accord.
The speakers also rejected the Shewan Dam project saying that
Sindh has no site for dam.
courtesy Daily
Business Recorder ,
23
April, 2002
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