PESHAWAR, July 6: Irrigation experts attribute flood losses suffered in Charsadda and Nowshera districts mostly to reclamation of land and unchecked encroachments on both sides of major rivers and their tributaries. “The width of Kabul and Swat riverbeds has shrunk considerably due to unchecked encroachments on their banks. As a result, when the two rivers experienced rise in water flow, vast area under cultivation and nearby villages inundate,” said a senior official of the irrigation department, the NWFP.

The width of the Kabul riverbed at Budhani, near Peshawar, had squeezed largely because successive provincial governments ignored growing encroachments set up on the dried-up riverbed, said official sources.

“There are several places in urban centres, particularly in the city, where the width of river-beds have been squeezed after people used dried-up river surface for cultivation and housing purposes over the years,” said an official hydrologist.

The successive governments, said the officials, facilitated fragile protective structures to encroachers on the banks of Kabul and Swat rivers.

“In a way, they encouraged increasing the crop area, but in actual their short-sightedness paved the way for the disaster the people of Charsadda and Nowshera experienced when most of these areas were inundated due to high flood in Kabul and Swat rivers,” said a senior officer of the irrigation department.

Reclamation of land from the dried-up riverbed, for cultivation and housing purposes, affected the water flow in major rivers and their tributaries, particularly in times of high discharge.

Officials of the irrigation department and hydrologists said the extent of recent damage caused by overflowing of Kabul and Swat rivers was because of unauthorized and illegal structures constructed on the river banks and on the dried-up passage of rivers.

“The flood water would not have caused greater losses given the river-beds were in their original shape,” said an official development planner.

Though water experts did not reject that Kabul and Swat Rivers received greater water flow this time round, they, however, attributed the instances of inundation to ill-planning and unchecked encroachments.

They said that traditionally rivers had a tendency to switch their flows from one side to another.

“The river changes its passage regularly and after every 10 years it goes back to its previous path inundating the structures constructed on the dried-up river bed,” said an official hydrologist.

He said the country in general and the NWFP in particular did not have financial and human resources for dredging to deepen the riverbeds as Japan and China had done to counter flood threat.

“At least we should keep the width of riverbeds in their original shape to ensure smooth water flow in times of heavy discharge as was the case recently when a vast area got inundated due to rising level water flow,” said Aurangzeb Khan, a retired executive engineer of the irrigation department.