MUZAFFARGARH: Water Management Department officials are discouraging farmers in one way or another from getting the modern solar-powered drip irrigation system here in Muzaffargarh.

The dedicated department was initiated to make a turnaround in the irrigation system and save water. So far, only 26 watercourses are functional and more than one dozen schemes are under process.

Several local farmers alleged that whenever they applied for efficient water management system, department officials would ask them to meet complicated requirements.

Farmers alleged that the department would ask them to make a committee of local farmers for watercourse management and open a joint account in an authorized bank where department deposit sums for expenditures.

This all comes at a condition that the committee chairman and general secretary will be appointed by the department. And in call cases, these two offices are given to the people who are not local and instead work as the frontmen of the officials. Many farmers fell to the trap taking it a just official formality but later they regretted their decision.

Malik Abdullah Langrial is one such victim of the department’s scheme. He said when he gave an application to the department for the watercourse, the department told him to make a committee of local farmers but their chairman and the secretary would be inducted by the department. Of the Rs1.5 million project, 80pc of the share comes from the government, and the remaining from the farmers. He said the department deducted Rs600,000 from the account in the name of different taxes.

He said when they demanded record and slips of the tax departments, the officials did not respond in a satisfactory manner. He alleged a sub-divisional officer also forced them to buy articles of the project from a specific shop in Qasba Gujrat. The shop belonged to the secretary of the water management.

Elahi Bukhsh Bodla, deputy director of the water management department, he said the deduction of Rs600,000 was as per the Federal Board of Revenue taxes. He also said funds were not available for new watercourse schemes. He said the department had introduced solar-powered drip system in Punjab but Muzaffargarh district had yet to get funds. He said his teams introduced tunnel farming in the district but the new method had yet to gain acceptance among the farmers and only a half dozen farmers gave application to department for tunnel farming.

He said Okara and Sahiwal districts were far ahead in tunnel farming. In tunnel farming, the department gives 50 percent of expenditures for the infrastructure while the remaining half is paid by farmers. Mr Bodla said that the new technology of shower irrigation system was also introduced to farmers of sand areas where underground water was brackish. Also, the government had launched a pilot project where farmers could store water in a pond which was later used for shower irrigation.

Mr Bodla said that in Muzaffargarh district, 150,000 acres could be made productive if they were brought under the showering system. He said the desert area from Head Muhammadwala to Rangpur could be made agriculture land with the help of the showering system.

The office of the Muzaffargarh Water Management Department is 10 kilometers from the city area in a village where farmers cannot reach easily.

Mr Bodla said that after the release of funds, his teams would start work on more watercourses and more new technology would be introduced for farmers.

Farmers alleged that only MPAs and bureaucrats were the beneficiary of the new schemes.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2019