May 12, 2003	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1424

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LAHORE, May 11: The Water and Power Development Authority on Sunday commissioned the telemetry system, ignoring objections from provinces that the system had not been calibrated to transmit correct data.

“In its present form, the system is unable to serve the purpose it was designed for,” says an official of the Punjab Irrigation Department. ‘

Explaining the calibration process, he said the censors installed at gates could not read magnitude of water release because the frequency (calibration) between the two had not been developed.

The technical staff was supposed to open gates of barrages and dams from zero release to their full capacity. This, he said, was only possible in the coming flood season because any mishandling in the present dry season could damage the gates both upstream and downstream.

“For this reason, the technical staff was requested to postpone the commissioning for few months. But Wapda wanted to beat the deadline with a big margin and ordered the commissioning on Sunday — almost 11 months ahead of the stipulated time; the project was supposed to be completed in 24 months but the commissioning has been ordered in the 13th month,” he said.

It may be mentioned Ecnec approved the project in 2001 at a cost of Rs450 million. But Wapda claimed to have completed it at a cost of Rs276 million.

On Sunday, the commissioning took place at 19 places that are: Tarbela, Mangla, Nowshehra, Jinnah, Chashma, Taunsa, Guddu, Sukkur, Kotri, Rasul, Trimmu, Panjnad, Marala, Khanki, Qadirabad, Sidhnai, Sulemanki and Islam and Balloki.

The system could not be installed at four sites — Garang regulator, Pat Feeder Canal, Uch Canal and Monthly Canal —- because of the law and order situation in these areas.

The information collected by the system is transmitted to the Indus River System Authority headquarters where it would be further processed and sent to seven monitoring bodies throughout the country. These seven bodies —- ministry of water and power, provincial irrigation secretaries, chief engineer Dera Murad Jamali, and Wapda House —- would be able to have a real time access to water release data read by computers, thus taking the whole process out of human discretion.

“The provinces have still not started using the data because it is not dependable though Wapda insisted that it matched the previous data released by the irrigation staff assigned on the barrages. But it forgot the fact that the same data was a bone of contention among the provinces,” said another official of the Punjab Irrigation Department.

“Wapda has finalized a schedule with provinces to calibrate the system as far as operational procedures allow during the current season,” claimed an official of Wapda involved in the process. There were serious objections but of course the calibration process had to be completed up to the entire satisfaction of technical requirements and provincial needs before the system could be declared dependable. Calibration is a process that would take some time because every water season has its own operational limitations and the system has to be tested in every one of them. The authority has declared the present figures only a test data and was not insisting on its use, he said.