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| April 27, 2002 | Saturday | Safar 13, 1423 |
Work on irrigation projects to begin soon
NAWABSHAH, April 26: President Pervez Musharraf has said that the government will soon undertake work on big irrigation projects in Sindh, including construction of Reni Canal and Sehwan barrage.
He was speaking at a gathering of Nazimeen, Naib Nazimeen, councillors and notables of Nawabshah district here on Friday.
The president on the occasion announced that loans up to Rs25,000 and accumulated interest payable to the Agriculture Development Bank of Pakistan would be written off in the drought-hit areas. He said a comprehensive relief package would be announced within next few days to mitigate the sufferings of the area people. He also announced regularization of katcha abadis.
The president said that the government was reorganising the ADBP in order to provide maximum relief to the farmers community, which was virtually in trouble due to multiplicity in the interest on the loans they obtained. “We would finalize a comprehensive package within three weeks to provide relief to growers,” he maintained.
He said the government was giving top priority to eliminate poverty from the society and provide jobs to the unemployed people by developing agriculture sector in rural areas and by initiating various development schemes in under-developed areas. The president said that the poor unemployed youth would also be provided soft loans to start small business to live a better life.
The government was striving to streamline water distribution and combat water-logging and salinity to boost the agriculture economy and improve the economic conditions of poor farmers, the president said and referred to the RBOD project launched by his government in Sindh.
The president said that he had directed Wapda to provide subsidy to the farmers on tubewells in Sindh
Emphasizing the need for judicious distribution of water within the province, he said that the people must realize the fact that construction of more water reservoirs was the dire need of the country to save cultivable land in future.
The president appealed to the people to shun their fears on dams, saying: “I know people do not like construction of dams but for storing water for agriculture purpose we will have to construct more dams.”
Speaking about shortage of water being faced by the province, the president assured the people that not a single drop of water from the share of one province would be provided to the other.
He said that it had often been alleged that Punjab had been stealing water from Sindh’s share at Taunsa and Chashma. He said that the telemetry system was being installed at both places and engineers from Sindh would be posted there to monitor the flow of water.
About new irrigation projects in the province, the president said that the construction of Reni Canal at a cost of Rs10 billion would bring under cultivation an area of three lakh acres. Moreover, work would also be undertaken soon on Sehwan barrage, one of the biggest projects under which six canals would be carved out.
The president said the government had also resumed work on the Right Bank Outfall Drain project at a cost of Rs14 billion to dispose the saline water directly into the sea and added that amended design would restore Manchhar Lake’s ecology.
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