October 04, 2007	Thursday	Ramazan 21, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 3: At least a two-year delay is expected in the completion of the National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW), supposed to be implemented by the end of 2009, sources told Dawn on Wednesday.

The Rs66 billion project, designed to carry out the brick lining of 86,000 watercourses countrywide to save water for irrigation purposes, started in 2004.

It was a ‘special initiative’ of President Gen Pervez Musharraf being coordinated by Minister for Industries and Production Jahangir Khan Tareen. The programme is run by federal and provincial project directors.

The sources in the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) told Dawn that the delay would be the outcome of the one-year of dillydallying in kicking off of the project. The start was snail-paced which would now take its toll on the overall efforts to meet the deadline. “Two years will be the minimum delay. The project can’t be completed before 2011,” a top official in the Planning Commission (PC) said.

The PC’s department, dealing with water projects implementation and monitoring, had assessed the overall pace of the project and the time it was going to take in completion, he added.

He said the PC was meeting on Thursday to review the performance of the Public Sector Development Programme in the first quarter (July-Sept) of the current financial year. Other projects in different sectors were also expected to be marked as ‘delayed’ during the review process, he added.

According to official figures, 33,000 watercourses have so far been brick-lined and the figure will be 40,000 by the mid-2009, which will be even less than half of the total project target.

The programme has employed 1,500 people directly and 18,000 indirectly. It would increase agricultural production and farmers’ income and employment opportunities in rural areas through effective utilisation of available water resources.

The project is estimated to save 8 million acre feet (MAC) water, reduce water-logging and salinity, increasing cropping intensity by 15-20 per cent, crop productivity by 10-15 percent, and equity in water distribution.