BHURBAN, June 21: Federal Minister for Information and Media Development, Nisar A. Memon inaugurated a two-day workshop on ‘Water for National Integration’ on Thursday to create awareness about water strategy.

The workshop provided a forum to discuss strategies for effective harnessing of water resources and their utilization for the future projects, says an official press release.

The workshop discussed the issues of water availability, its distribution, requirement for agriculture, industry, municipal environment and future storages.

Agreements/legislations relating to water, development potential, including Vision 2025 were also discussed.

The workshop unanimously agreed that 1991 Water Accord was sacrosanct and be implemented in letter and spirit. The need for additional storages was recognized and accepted if surplus water is available. The workshop also agreed studies for requirement of flow downstream Kotri should be immediately initiated by the federal government.

The studies will be on sea water intrusion and will also include ecological effects on Indus delta. A study is also needed to assess the availability and usability of groundwater.

The provinces were in complete agreement that Pakistan’s future would depend on the extent to which it can raise productivity. This applies to all sectors but more so to agriculture sector (whereas its contribution to the GDP is 25 per cent, it employs 50 per cent of the labour force). The onset of a transformation in agriculture is going to be inevitable and, therefore, water and its management and development will remain the most important driver of growth.

Other improvements needed will be development of rural services, veterinary health cover, agriculture extension services, training and imparting of new skills and techniques, flow of credit, storage, marketing and agri-business, and scaling up of micro-finance operations for agricultural growth in future years. Export orientation of the agrarian system is going to be equally important.

Nisar A. Memon, Minister for Information, who conducted the workshop, would report to the president about the deliberations and the outcome of the workshop.

The workshop which was attended by over 40 participants, including representative group of professionals drawn from all the provinces. —APP