ISLAMABAD, Jan 2: Only a few senators from the treasury benches attended the government briefing on the construction of large water reservoirs on Monday following a boycott by opposition members.

The in-camera briefing was given by Secretary of the Ministry of Water and Power Ashfaq Mehmood and Wapda’s chairman Tariq Hameed.

Opposition members boycotted the briefing terming it a “one-sided affair” and a “useless activity.”

Senator Farhatullah Babar of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) said the government had actually pre-planned the briefing to justify the construction of the Kalabagh dam. He said that several such briefings had been held in the past and consequently three provincial assemblies had passed unanimous resolutions against the dam’s construction.

Meanwhile, according to an official handout, the secretary of the ministry and the Wapda chairman gave a brief overview of the water projects and presented salient features of the report of the Technical Committee on Water and Power, otherwise known as the ‘Abbasi Committee’, and informed senators that there existed a “total consensus on building large water reservoirs”.

The senators were told Pakistan was a water-scarce country as per global criteria and presently it was facing a shortage of nine million-acre feet (MAF). Rapidly increasing population was further depleting the online storages and that 93 per cent of water was being consumed by the agriculture sector which in turn made a significant contribution to the country’s GDP, they were told.

They were also informed that the projected storage of water in 2020 was estimated at 20 MAF while it was likely to increase it to 25 MAF by 2025. It was suggested that construction of a series of dams would help overcome the problem of water shortage.

The briefing was attended by Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro, leader of house in Senate Wasim Sajjad, some federal ministers and senators belonging to the ruling coalition.