QUETTA: Balochistan Governor Mohammad Khan Achakzai has warned that the declining underground water level in Quetta and the lingering water crisis may affect implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project. He called for immediate measures to resolve the issue.

Mr Achakzai was speaking at a seminar on “Water Crisis in Quetta Valley and Balochistan and the Way Forward”, jointly organised by the Public Health Engineering Department of Balochistan and Pakistan Army at the Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University here on Wednesday.

“Due to faulty planning, forests and rainwater could not be preserved in Balochistan, which is posing a threat to the region,” the governor said, adding that the Khushdil Khan Dam, Spin Karez and several other water projects had been carried out, “but we did not pay attention to their further improvement after the British rulers left the region”.

He stressed the need for accelerating the pace of work on construction of dams and other water preservation projects.

He said that drought in Balochistan over the past decades had forced people to migrate from villages to cities and as a result the population of Quetta surged to three million.

The governor said that an increase in the number of tubewells without any planning had also deepened the water crisis.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2016