ISLAMABAD, Jan 28: The federal government has approved a Rs1.5 billion project to develop irrigation system in five districts of Balochistan that will benefit thousands of farmers in Quetta, Pishin, Killa Abdullah, Mastung and Kalat districts.

The project was discussed and approved by the Central Development Working Party (CDWP). The project will help in the development of agriculture in the area and alleviate poverty through improvement of water management.

The project has been divided into three components: partial restoration of water storage capacity of Khushdil Khan protective embankment by raising its level by 2.2 metres; remodelling of its spillway; constructing another protective embankment and repairing the headworks and outlet channel, an official said.

He said that the project would help improve small-scale irrigation schemes through lining of 15 existing channels and improvement of the traditional underground Karez storage ponds and rehabilitation of structures in flood protection schemes. Capacity-building of the irrigation department, water management institution and farmers’ organisation was also included, he said.

Balochistan, he said, had two types of irrigation systems i.e. Indus gravity-fed canal system that irrigated 230,000 hectares and small-scale irrigation covering about 320,000 hectares annually. Currently, there were 31,799 tube wells in the province. Of these, 48 per cent were electrically-operated.

He said that groundwater was the most precious water resource of Balochistan, adding that most important income-generating activities, irrigated horticulture, domestic and industrial, largely depended on groundwater.

The official said that Pishin-Lora Basin was a major river basin in Balochistan covering an area of 16,928 square kilometres with 10 sub-basins spread over five districts -- Pishin, Killa, Abdullah, Quetta, Mastung, and Kalat -- with a total population of about 1.2 million.

He said that as in the rest of the province, persistent drought conditions had a severe impact on the livelihood pattern of local people, mainly because of drying up of irrigation and potable (surface and ground) water resources, degradation of forests and rangelands and reduction in agriculture production.

Groundwater within the basin was currently being used at rates 2-3 times more than the recharge rate and exploitation has continued despite the situation being deemed critical almost a decade ago. Investigations carried out before the drought showed that 2 out of 14 basins (Pishin-Lora and Nari) had been completely exhausted, while six out of the 12 remaining basins had used more than 80 per cent of their water resources.

In other basins, the water table was also falling rapidly. The situation had been exacerbated during the recent drought through a combination of continued over-mining of depleted aquifers and insignificant recharge. It showed that there was an urgent need to undertake measures to rejuvenate depleting aquifers.

The key strategic choice made in the project was to formulate it as a part of a long-term framework (12-15 years) which would allow it to enforce and support adoption of basin approach for sustainable planning, development and management of water resources for agriculture, the official said.—APP