January 30, 2007	Tuesday	Muharram 10, 1428

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HYDERABAD, Jan 29: The heads of two major associations of Sindh’s growers have appealed to the president of Pakistan to consider reviewing his decision about dams and new canals on the River Indus in the supreme national interest because they said the system had no surplus water.

In a joint statement issued on Monday the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture President Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah and Sindh Abadgar Board President Abdul Majeed Nizamani said that people of Sindh had been consistently expressing their concerns about the construction of any dam on the river.

Sindh Assembly had strongly opposed the construction of Kalabagh Dam on more than one occasions and adopted a number of unanimous resolutions in this regard. Similarly, the NWFP and Balochistan assemblies had also passed unanimous resolutions against the Kalabagh Dam, they said.

The two growers’ representative bodies had also been voicing farming community’s reservations on this dams but the response they had so far received was the proposal for the construction of not one but five dams including Kalabagh being vigorously propagated through print and electronic media.

Over and above, the government had made it public that the dams would be completed by 2016 and that committees had been formed for the acquisition of land and raising funds for the dams, they said.

The step had once again caused serious unrest in the province as the people had always feared any more dams on the river would ruin agriculture sector and destroy echo system, which was already in a shambles due to reduced flow of water downstream Kotri Barrage, they said.

They drew the president’s attention towards the recommendations of technical committee on water resources headed by A. N. G. Abbasi and said that according to committee report there was no surplus water available except during occasional high flood years which occurred once five or ten years.

The pro-dam lobby claimed that an average inflow of 90 MAF at Kalabagh including the flow of the Kabul River justified the dams’ construction, which was but an attempt to twist fact. The fact was that the average inflow at Kalabagh was not even sufficient to meet the downstream requirements of 81 MAF according to the water accord allocations, the growers' leaders said.

The report said that at present Mangla Dam was being filled in an arbitrary manner with no specific criteria laid down for the purpose. The Indus link canals C-J and T-P were also being operated in an arbitrary manner as there was no need to operate the canals in Kharif when enough water was available from the Chenab and Jehlum rivers to meet the allocations of both upper and lower tributary canals of the Punjab, the report said.

They said that the committee had concluded that water accord was being violated as far as distribution and shortages were concerned and that Sindh was being denied its legitimate share under the accord.

Kalabagh Dam, according to World Bank, would cot $15 billion while according to Asian Development Bank's estimates, an additional 4.7 MAF water could be provided through conservation measures at a cost of only $1.7 billion, they said.

They appealed to the president to review his decision on the dams.