HYDERABAD, Sept 6: District Coordination Officer Hyderabad, Aftab Ahmed Khatri directed the officers concerned to accelerate the pace of development works and ensure lining of targeted 80 watercourses under the National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) by the end of June 2008.

He was presiding over a meeting to review the performances about implementation of NPIW at his office here on Wednesday.

He said the target for lining 80 watercourses during financial year 2007-08 has been given by higher authorities to Hyderabad district, because of its best performance in completing lining of 70 targeted watercourses during 2006-07 and directed the officers not only to maintain the same spirit of development work but further expedite it to clinch the prize of best performance from government of Sindh.

He said that as the NPIW has been initiated with participatory approach, as such the officers concerned should not only remain in touch with the registered farmers associations but also arrange farmers’ meetings with district administration to get their technical problems resolved and to arrange farmers’ days for crating awareness among them to join this important national programme.

He said that this was very important project which will bring the growers out of water crisis and raise the living standard of the rural community.

Responding to the problems pointed out by district officer On-Farm Water Management for not starting the construction work despite receiving government funds by some farmers associations, the DCO directed the mukhtiarkars concerned either to get the work started or recover the government funds from such problematic associations within three days failing which FIRs should be lodged against them as warnings had been issued earlier.

DCO Hyderabad, who is also the chairman of District Implementation Committee for NPIW, further directed the officers concerned to recover balance amount from the farmers associations due to their less work and also directed to get remaining 32 lined watercourses of previous year verified from the consultants.

EDO agriculture, Shahabuddin Siddiqui said that all efforts would be made to achieve the target of lining 80 watercourses during current financial year. He said that the meeting of farmers associations with district administration would be arranged periodically to encourage farmers and solve their problems to make the project grand success.

EDO finance, Javed Junejo, district officer On-Farm Water Management, Mushtaq Talpur, deputy director project monitoring unit, leader of each field team, consultants and other officers of district government attended the meeting.

WATER ROTATION: XEN Naseer irrigation division Hyderabad announced here on Thursday that due to the shortage of water in main Rohri canal the following waterways will remain closed up to Sept 11.