ISLAMABAD, Dec 18: The additional water that will be there in case the Kalabagh and Bhasha dams are built, will be distributed among Sindh and Punjab, says a senior official, adding that the NWFP and Balochistan are unlikely to get such benefit. The official, who is in the water and power ministry, told Dawn on Sunday that Kalabagh and Bhasha dams would together help the country regain the capacity that has been lost after accumulation of silt in existing reservoirs.

He said a high-level meeting had been recently informed that overall canal withdrawals had declined to 104 million acre feet (MAF) against the 117.35MAF envisaged in the 1991 Water Accord.

Currently, the reduction in water share as a result of shortage is not applied to Balochistan and the NWFP and the two provinces get their full share in accordance with the accord. The shortage is applied only to Sindh and Punjab.

The live storage of Kalabagh dam and Bhasha dam will be 6.1MAF and 7.34MAF, respectively, which means that the total capacity will reach 117.4MAF when these dams are completed. The 2.88MAF capacity of Mangla dam will compensate for the loss till the construction of two additional dams.

Under the 1991 accord, the NWFP and Balochistan are not entitled to get additional water if total availability is less than 117.4MAF. As such, the two new dams will provide about 13MAF of additional water to Sindh and Punjab.

The NWFP and Balochistan can be provided additional water under para-4 of the water accord in case the total water availability is in excess of 117.4MAF. Since the overall water availability will not cross 117.4MAF even after the completion of the two dams, these two provinces will continue to get their existing water share.

The total water availability has been estimated at 117.35MAF. Of this, 55.94MAF is reserved for Punjab, 48.76MAF for Sindh, 8.78MAF for the NWFP and 3.87MAF for Balochistan.