ISLAMABAD, May 31: The Indus River System Authority (Irsa) and the provincial irrigation representatives on Wednesday refused to take over the Rs320 million telemetry system from Wapda, citing its continuous failure to record accurate water situation.

An inter-provincial meeting also turned down the Sindh government’s demand to revise the operational reservoir plan because of stiff opposition from Wapda and the Punjab government.

The meeting, however, decided that Wapda should conduct a countrywide study of water losses in consultation with the provinces. They study should be completed in two to three years’ time.

Irsa Chairman Shafqat Masood, who is also member Punjab on Irsa, presided over the meeting.

Mr Masood said that the meeting’s participants had called upon Wapda to continue handling the reservoir operation plan because it had done a lot of work on operational plan of major reservoirs besides conducting two separate studies on reservoir operations and losses.

He said the provinces had expressed “reservations, complaints and difficulties” about the telemetry system, adding that Wapda had responded on some of the issues.

The chairman, however, said Irsa could not take over the telemetry system from Wapda unless it provided accurate figures. “I really feel frightened whenever transfer of telemetry system to Irsa comes up for discussion,” said Mr Masood, adding the system was not meeting its objectives and it produced contradictory figures.

He said none of the Irsa members, including himself (Mr Masood), had ever received any directive from the President to take over the telemetry system from Wapda.

He said it had been decided to constitute a group of Wapda and provincial representatives to conduct a study on water losses throughout the country and all river areas. The terms of the study would be finalised by Irsa in consultation with the provinces, he said.

Mr Masood said overall water losses in the country currently stood between 15 and 20 per cent while on Wednesday losses between Sukkur and Kotri amounted to 28 per cent.

Additional Secretary of Sindh’s irrigation department said Sindh had strongly opposed the transfer of telemetry system because of its continuous failure to record accurate water releases.

He said all provinces had made it clear that they would not allow the system’s transfer to Irsa unless its faults were rectified.

He said the situation of telemetry system could be assessed from the fact that it was showing releases downstream Chashma at 180,000 cusecs while manual readings showed it to be 80,000 cusec, depicting a difference of 100,000 cusecs.

The telemetry system had been installed at a cost of Rs320 million about three years ago on the directives of the President to remove misunderstandings among the provinces over water theft and losses.