14 March 2004	Sunday	22 Muharram 1425

ISLAMABAD, Mar 13: The International Day on Large Dams was observed here on Saturday with the participants from all the four provinces criticising the government and the international financial institutions (IFI) for ignoring the interests of the people in devising major water intervention schemes.

The day was marked by a meeting organised jointly by a number of NGOs and attended by the civil society activists and affected people of various water projects undertaken in the country.

Among the participants were some members of Parliament including Senator Nisar Memon, Chairman of the Parliamentary Water Committee, Dr Sher Afgan from Mianwali, and Rauf Mengal from Balochistan, who presented their respective points of view.

There was no representative of the government though one of the organisers stated that efforts were made to make the Ministry of Water and Power depute someone to represent it in the proceedings. Likewise, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank allegedly refused to attend the meeting, it was further stated.

Major criticism of the large dams was that their planning did not take into account the long-lasting economic, social and cultural impact on the affected communities, downstream and upstream of such projects.

Thousands of households affected by Tarbela and Mangla dams, for example, were still struggling to get compensation decades after their implementation, it was alleged. Moreover, the number of villages and households affected by these reservoirs was grossly under-stated in order to reduce the expenditure on such compensation.

So long as the people were not aware of these adverse effects, the government launched these projects with a fanfare. But these days these are approved and begun surreptitiously - the Greater Thal Canal, for instance.

Destruction of forests, geographical imbalance, extinction of bio-diversity, wastage of water and provincial differences over water distribution were among the major drawbacks of these projects.

"Water is life and the fresh water of earth is property of the people which nobody has the right to buy or sell for any monetary benefit," it was stressed.

Agricultural development, elimination of poverty and resolution of conflicts over water demanded that all the water resources be under people's control.

The water distribution formula proposed by IRSA has only exacerbated distrust among federating units, particularly, between Punjab and Sindh with the Seraiki area having clearly come out with a stand at variance with that of Punjab.