July 23, 2008	Wednesday	Rajab 19, 1429

ISLAMABAD, July 22: The government has been advised by its planners to strive for a national consensus on building new reservoirs and an improved formula for distribution of water among the provinces in order to cope with the growing water shortage.

A mid-term review of the Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF 2005-10) by the Planning Commission expresses concern that various water-related targets set for the first three years have been missed and urges the government to rectify the situation in the remaining period.

It said that low water storage capacity and continuous deterioration of reservoirs due to sedimentation were major challenges.

The commission asks the government to go for “impartial assessment” of the optimal outflow downstream Kotri and take into account the overall low irrigation efficiency and inefficient water use at the farm level.

Issues concerning excessive extraction of ground water and use of poor quality water for irrigation have also been raised.

The review calls for a national programme to monitor the quality of water and enforce standards on discharge of effluents into rivers, lakes and streams.

From an allocation of Rs161.4 billion, mainly for the Ministry of Water and Power, an amount of Rs146.1 billion, 90.5 per cent, is expected to be utilised during the first three years.

The MTDF visualised enhancement of water availability at the farm gate to 138.5 and 141.4 million acre feet (MAF) during the first two years of the plan.

During the period under review, an increase in availability was observed, but there was a shortfall of 0.8 and 1.3 per cent during the respective years.

The increase in availability was achieved from surface water supplies, through canal withdrawals, watercourse improvement, canal remodelling, irrigation system rehabilitation programme, small irrigation schemes and ground water. In spite of some achievements, shortfalls have also been witnessed in respect of the lining of irrigation channels in Sindh.

About 0.24 million hectares were planned to be reclaimed from water logging and salinity through rehabilitation/replacement of 220 saline groundwater tubewells, transitioning of 1000 Scarp tubewells, and excavation of 23 million cubic meters of earth for surface drains during each year of the period under review.

“The reclamation of disastrous area fell short of the target by 16.7 and 58.3 per cent respectively during the first and second year of MTDF,” the review said. About 86,000 watercourses were proposed to be improved under the MTDF to save water losses.But the target was missed by large margins. The achievements, nevertheless, under flood control schemes exceeded or met the respective targets during the period, except in case of embankments during 2006-07 which fell short of the target by 11.2 per cent.

During the period, sufficient resources were allocated and utilised to complete the ongoing projects and high priority projects relating to water storage and conveyance and projects to minimise seepage losses.

The overall implementation remained satisfactory and the planned targets were generally achieved. But, in projects such as the lining of irrigation channels the achievements were lower than planned.