February 26, 2008	Tuesday	Safar 18, 1429

HYDERABAD, Feb 25: Lower Sindh faces around 50 per cent shortage in water releases into perennial canals and the situation is bound to have negative impact on per acre yield of wheat, fear the growers who dispute figures on water distribution released by irrigation officials.

Inquiries revealed that two perennial canals - lined channel also known as Akram Wah and Kalri Baghar (KB) feeder – of Kotri Barrage face 50 per cent shortage. The situation was not going to improve until mid March, said a barrage official.

The shortage would seriously affect wheat, which was at grain formation stage, said the Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) chief and eminent agriculture expert Abdul Majeed Nizamani. If wheat did not get water at this stage, it always led to shrinkage of grain, he feared.

“Around 15,000 cusec of Sindh’s water has gone missing because I have no faith in the figures being given by irrigation authorities about release of water at different distribution systems of barrages. They are fictitious,” he reacted when asked about the affects of shortage during Rabi season.

Another agriculture expert Mehmood Nawaz Shah believed that the shortage would hit not only wheat but also sugarcane that had been sown and mango which has entered flowering stage.

He said that despite repeated calls the irrigation authorities did not take growers onboard about desilting of Sukkur Barrage and its off-taking canals including Rohri Canal.

“Only in Naseer division - a Rohri Canal’s distributary - only 2,100 cusec of water is available as per official figure against a requirement of 3,600 cusec,” he said.

He alleged mismanagement in rotation programme, which claimed varied from one distributary to the other. Normally, if 50 per cent of water was available every distry must get water for around a fortnight but that “is not happening here. In some areas water is released for hardly five to six days”, he said while questioning authorities’ decision of not making the rotation programme public.

He was highly critical of authorities for not sharing details of desilting of Sukkur Barrage and its off-taking canals. “We need to be taken onboard so that we can look into expenses and budgetary allocations incurred on desilting of canals,” he stressed.

Besides Rice Canal, all the other canals, perhaps half a dozen of Sukkur Barrage are perennial and need regular supply of water. The authorities close the barrage a few days before annual desilting and start supplying water a few days afterwards.

He said that Rohri Canal opened on Jan 21 after closure period but it still faced water scarcity.

According to control room of Kotri Barrage, 20,995 cusec is available at Sukkur upstream and 2,535 at its downstream. A discharge of 2,335 cusec is recorded at Kotri Barrage upstream but there is zero discharge at downstream.

Mr Nizamani claimed that Chashma-Jehlum link canal, which according to Water Accord 1991 had no allocations at all, was getting 4,000 to 7,000 cusec of water.“The link canal is to be supplied water only during mid-June when water flows are available and that too with permission of lower riparian i.e. Sindh,” he claimed. At Guddu upstream 35,000 cusec was recorded although 43,000 cusec was released at Taunsa downstream, he added.

Official sources of Kotri Barrage said that since 50 per cent shortage was being experienced at Kotri Barrage, the KB Feeder was not getting its full quota of water supply that came around 3,000 cusec.

At present 1,500 to 1,600 cusec was being released into KB Feeder, which released 1,000 into Keenjhar Lake, had hardly 500-600 cusec for agriculture purpose and population between Kotri and other areas. There was no shortage of water for Hyderabad, he clarified.