ISLAMABAD, Sept 28: The Indus River System Authority (Irsa) prepared on Saturday a water distribution plan for provinces, predicting a shortage of 35 per cent of flows in country’s rivers during the coming wheat-sowing rabi season, starting from Monday.
However, the provincial representatives rejected Irsa’s estimate of 35 per cent shortage and put it around 30 per cent, an Irsa official said.
The provincial governments were asked to submit their proposals before an advisory committee meeting set for Oct 5. Minor adjustments would be made in the plan in the light of recommendations of the provinces before its final approval by the advisory committee, the official said.
The water distribution plan for the rabi season has been prepared on the basis of a controversial method based on historical uses of water and not in accordance with a formula envisaged in the 1991 Water Accord.
A Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) official said he had apprised Irsa members that 2.1maf of river water was, what he called, “wasted and flowed down the Kotri barrage into the sea” during the last monsoon season.
Without naming any particular project, the Wapda official underlined the need for construction of new reservoirs to build additional storage capacity to check the wastage of flood waters.
An official of the Punjab government called for giving priority to projects that could significantly raise existing storages, and said the proposed Akori canal project, designed to create an additional storage capacity of 6maf of water upstream Tarbela Dam, should be taken up at the earliest.
A project involving construction of a 30km-long canal is also included in the Wapda vision 2025 plan.
According to the Irsa projections, in case of minimum shortages during the coming rabi season, 19maf of water would be available in the country’s river system and 11.62maf in the worst case scenario.
In Saturday’s meeting, the authority also reviewed shortages suffered by the provinces during the outgoing kharif season when Punjab got 7.6 per cent less water, Sindh 4.6 per cent and Balochistan 13.3 per cent less.
The authority also noted that the forecast about rains made by the Meteorological Office during the last three years remained way off the mark and proved wrong.
