LAHORE, May 25: Three of the five members of the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) have quit their jobs, leaving the members from Balochistan and the NWFP in charge of the authority.
The tenure of the members from Sindh, teh Punjab and the Centre expired last October but they were asked to continue working on an ad-hoc basis, which they did until they got various other assignments.
The members from Sindh and the Centre tendered their resignations in March while the man from the Punjab sent his in the third week of May after one and a half months' leave. Nominations for the posts have since been lying with the government.
This has created a communication gap between the authority and the provinces at a crucial stage of cotton-sowing with daily wranglings on water distribution creating schisms among the federating units.
Commenting on the situation, an Irsa official said that the Prime Minister Secretariat should have nominated the provincial members by now in view of sensitivity of the situation.
During the last two weeks, Irsa distributed water among provinces on a daily basis, which it was not supposed to do. It also erred in making calculations, which it disowned only when damage had been done to the cotton crop.
He said that during the first 10 days of May, Irsa calculated Sindh water losses at 43 per cent and arbitrarily reduced the water losses of the Punjab to 15 per cent -- against a claim of 32 per cent. It took the authority almost a week of heated correspondence with the Punjab to realize and correct its mistake.
Wild fluctuations in water inflow have not helped Irsa either, he said. During such times, it usually starts distributing water on a five-day basis. But Irsa, under pressure because of water shortage and the communication gap between it and the provinces, made daily allocations and then got caught in arguments with provinces.
It also tried to allocate water at Taunsa barrage, said an official of the Punjab irrigation department. The authority can only distribute water at Chashma barrage, where it can add and store water. But it twice allocated the provincial shares at Taunsa barrage during the last two weeks and earned ire of the Punjab before rectifying the situation.
Meanwhile, an official of the Punjab government dispelled rumours that the province was getting more then its allocated share of water. Barring a few days of confusion and correspondence between Irsa and Punjab, there had been no confusion in water allocation and distribution.
The Punjab was getting water strictly according to its share. On Tuesday, Sindh was getting 128,000 cusecs against its share of 88,000 cusecs. The additional supply was meant to compensate it for its 43 per cent losses.
The Punjab was getting only 34,000 cusecs against its total requirement of 56,000 cusecs from the Indus. It was trying to get the rest of its supplies from Mangla at heavy losses because it had to use these to feed the southern part of the province where water travelled through dry river beds.
