ISLAMABAD, Feb 11: The government has agreed to notify modified terms of reference (TORs) on a 'give-and-take basis' to activate ANG Abbasi-led technical committee on the contentious water issue.
A senior government official told Dawn on Wednesday that the question relating to water requirement downstream Kotri has been excluded from the jurisdiction of the Abbasi committee. He said the prime minister has approved the relevant summary in this regard.
On the other hand, a major demand of Mr Abbasi that called for the assessment of overall water availability to ascertain the viability of a new reservoir has been accepted by the government.
As such, the committee would have the powers to ascertain, based on facts and figures, whether there is enough surplus water available for the construction of a big reservoir like Bhasha dam or Kalabagh dam at all. At the same time, the government would give Mr Abbasi the status of a state minister instead of a federal minister as the chairman of the technical committee on water.
This apparently concludes a six-month-long dispute between the federal government and ANG Abbasi over the TORs of the technical committee. Mr Abbasi, however, could not be immediately reached to confirm whether or not the revised TORs of the committee were acceptable to him.
The official said that Mr Abbasi was demanding that he be allowed to vet decisions of the Nisar Memon-led parliamentary committee on water with reference to water requirement downstream Kotri but he added that everything could not be accepted.
He said that the Nisar Memom committee has already laid to rest the controversy over water requirement downstream Kotri and is initiating three feasibility studies on the subject including one on environmental aspects of this requirement throughout the country on the demand of Punjab.
Mr Abbasi has been saying that he could not activate his committee unless he had clear picture of what was the job of the committee and his demands for logistical and infrastructure support were accepted.
He had written to the federal government that draft TORs of the committee finalized in consultations with the former Wapda chairman Zulfiqar Ali Khan were not notified by the federal government and he would not start working unless those common points were included in the TORs.
President Gen Pervez Musharraf had announced the constitution of two - parliamentary and technical - committees on water resources in August last year for reaching a consensus on the construction of big water reservoirs. The parliamentary committee has so far held four meetings but the technical committee led by ANG Abbasi did not hold even a single meeting due to the TOR wranglings.
