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| September 13, 2005 | Tuesday | Sha’aban 8, 1426 |
Demand for probe into watercourse lining project
HYDERABAD, Sept 12: The Sindh Agriculture Forum has called for an investigation into watercourse lining project. In a statement faxed to Dawn on Monday, the president of the forum, Noor Ahmed Nizamani, said the project of lining of 29,000 watercourses with a grant of Rs22 billion from the federal government had suffered a serious setback.
He said on paper about 500 watercourses were shown to have been lined but in actuality there were only 70 watercourses that had been lined and 50 per cent of them have collapsed including most celebrated and highly publicized watercourse in Ghotki district that was visited by three federal ministers amid much fanfare.
He said the material being used in lining of watercourses was substandard and of poor quality.
He said precast cement slabs of parabolic design manufactured by private companies were not built according to proper specifications.
He pointed out that when slabs were laid in watercourses, they do not seal properly.
The factories making these cement slabs did not have required equipment and some have no vibrators.
In almost all cases, the factories have no water tanks for curing of precast cement slabs so they break easily during assembly in the field, Mr Nizamani said.
He said it was due to faulty design that slabs did not seal properly resulting in a heavy loss of water due to seepage.
Worst of all these factories use highly saline water in manufacture of precast cement slabs, the SAF president maintained.
He said these companies in connivance with Sindh On-farm Water Management officials were cheating the farmers.
Another major factor in the debacle of the programme, he said, was that the Sindh irrigation department officials had lowered beds of minors and distributaries resulting in restricted flow of water through modules (Mogas).
Nr Nizamani said due to lowered beds of minors proper height of water flow could not be maintained and water could not flow through them according to the design.
He said nine out of every ten watercourses lined during the past several years with the World Bank assistance have been demolished by farmers.
Mr Nizamani asked for an investigation into the matter and demanded that farmers be protected.
He said the goals of lining of watercourses could not be achieved without removing difficulties of the farmers.
SUGAR MILLS: The provincial agriculture secretary has issued directives to the Sindh cane commissioner to take action as per law against defaulting sugar mills so that outstanding amount of cess fund as well as arrears of growers are recovered at an early date.
The directorate of information, Sindh Agriculture Extension Hyderabad, in a statement issued here on Monday said an amount of Rs84.474 million was outstanding against sugar mills on account of sugarcane cess fund.
In addition to that an amount of Rs513.948 million for the crushing season 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05 was also outstanding against sugar mills payable to growers which had been delayed without any reason, causing economic problems for the growers.
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