DADU, Nov 23: Work on the second component of the Right Bank Outfall Drain has been stopped by contractors as funds have not been released for the project since April 2007.

It is feared that the project may not be completed in the stipulated time — by December 31, 2008 — due to delay in the release of funds.

Expressing apprehensions, environmentalists and water experts said that if the RBOD-II project was not completed and MNV drain water was not released into the sea, the Manchhar Lake would be destroyed, resulting into death of fish species, besides turning hundreds of thousands of acres of land barren due to water logging.

The RBOD-II project was launched by the irrigation department at a cost of Rs29.5 billion with federal government funding on November 20, 2001. The drain stretches over 273 kilometres starting from Zero point of Karampur village of Sehwan taluka to Gharo Creek of Thatta district to flow saline and polluted water of Main Nara Valley drain into the sea.

The main purpose of this project is revival of fresh water Manchhar Lake and diversion of polluted water of MNV into the sea through a drain with discharge capacity of 3,500 cusec with the depth of 20 feet and width of 105 feet.

The federal government has deducted Rs1,800 million out of Rs2,400 million budget of the RBOD project from April 2007 to October 2008, and released only Rs600 million to the Sindh government. Still the provincial finance department has not released the budgeted amount for the project since April 2007.

At the beginning, Sindh Irrigation department started the work on the project but in June 2006 the project was handed over to Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), an organisation being run under the umbrella of army.

The FWO had written to the Sindh government that it had carried out work of Rs2,000 million and demanded to release the same amount, warning that work might suffer in case of failure.

Retired superintending engineer of the RBOD Altaf Soomro said that the project was beneficial for Sindh as after its completion 400,000 acres of land would be protected from water logging which for the time being was barren.

An environmentalist, Naseer Memon, said that toxic level of polluted water of Manchhar Lake was recorded at TDS 12,000 PPM at Shah Hassan, and the water was not fit for human consumption. He said that saline water of upper Sindh and industrial waste flowed into the lake through MNV drain.

Pakistan Fisher folk Forum vice-chairman Ghulam Mustafa Mirani said that small growers cultivating 300,000 acres of land around the lake and 60,000 people, including fishermen, depended on Manchhar water. He said that if the RBOD was not completed by the stipulated time, MNV drain water would adversely affect the agrarian economy of the area.