LAHORE: Farmers kept away from desilting drive: Allocation doubled
By Ahmad Fraz Khan
LAHORE, Jan 6: The Punjab government has launched this year's desiltation campaign without involving local farmers, it is learnt. Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi would formally inaugurate the campaign shortly which would continue throughout January.
An official of the Punjab Irrigation Department told Dawn here on Tuesday the decision had been taken because of farmers' "lack of interest" in the drive during the last two years. "The drive did not yield desired results because of too much dependence on farmers who did not take as much interest as they should have, or at least the department had hoped for.
"The department paid the bill of around Rs120 million, but the results did not justify such a heavy investment as silt had choked most of the distributaries. "For this reason, the department decided to do it alone this year. The total cost this year would not be more than Rs240 million but the benefit would certainly be multiplied," he said
Answering a question, the official said the department did not possess machinery required for the desiltation of 5,937 miles long water channels and would engage the private sector.
In order to ensure proper monitoring, the minister has directed department employees to inform local members of parliament before starting the campaign in their areas.
The minister has further asked the department employees to brief all the MPs about the nature and extent of work to be done in their areas beforehand so that they could ensure success of the drive.
The minister has also instructed officials to involve members of tail-end committees and other prominent figures from the area so that proper monitoring is ensured.
Farmers on the other hand say that the decision to keep them out of the campaign would only lead to more corruption as the budget had been doubled without corresponding increase in the quantum of work.
"The department was only putting the blame of its failure on the farmers and trying to mint money out of the whole exercise. After all, who will certify the success or failure of the campaign. Naturally, it will be the department itself," a farmer from Okara said.
The department has suddenly declared that last two years' campaign was a failure and unilaterally decided to go it alone. It has neither consulted any farmers' body nor taken any input from the individual farmers.
"One cannot comprehend basis of the decision. The department did not bother to explain except for declaring last two years' drive a failure and changing the complexion of the whole campaign," the farmer lamented.
An official of the Kissan Board wondered how the government could take such a policy decision without any input from the farmers. Sometimes back, the government suddenly decided to impose flat rate of abiyana (water charge) and then declared it beneficial for farmers.
"Without questioning the merits and demerits of the decision, the farmers have a right to ask on what basis government officials change policy without consulting farmers, the beneficiaries or victim of their decisions," he wondered.
