IT is only during the short flooding period of three months that water is available to us directly from rivers. As for the remaining nine months it is the water stored in dams that meets our agricultural and other needs.

The supply of water to the vast plains of the country (where dams cannot be built), per force, has to come from the mountainous regions of the country, where dams can be built. Ignorance of this simple fact is the rootcause of our water problems.

There are countries where people living in the plains have offered to fund dams in the mountains to benefit from the power and water which otherwise they cannot have.

Sindh needs a dam on the Indus more than Punjab, which has ample ground water. If Mangla and Tarbela dams could have increased supplies to Sindh from 35.60 maf to 44.50 maf, why couldn’t the Kalabagh dam also do the same!

Engr Khurshid Anwer

Lahore

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2016