HYDERABAD, July 29: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture and Sindh Abadgar Board, the representative bodies of the growers of Sindh, have emphasised the need for gearing up the pace of work on National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NIPW).

The project was initiated in all 23 districts of Sindh in 2004 with the task of completion of 33,000 watercourses at an estimated cost of Rs 22 billion.

The President, Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Syed Qamar-uz-Zaman Shah, who is also President of Chambers of Agriculture Pakistan, told journalists that there was a dire need to speed up the work on the project so that it could provide benefit to the growers at the earliest.

He said the delay in timely lining of watercourses would further create inconvenience to the growers' community.

He said that Sindh was located at the lower end and the increasing water-logging and salinity due to sub-soil water was posing a great threat to the agriculture land of the province.

He emphasised the need for completion of the project under one umbrella to remove the bottlenecks. He suggested that Sindh Agriculture Engineering Department should be authorised to complete project.

President, Sindh Abadgar Board, Abdul Majeed Nizamani, said that at the initial stage, the pace of work on the project was slow and not up to the mark, however with the passage of time, it was now gaining momentum.

He emphasised completion of lining of at least 10,000 watercourses in a year so that the target could be achieved on time.

He suggested timely and easy provision of required funds so that the authorities concerned should not face any hurdle in completion of the task.

The officials of Programme Monitoring Unit of NPIW Sindh, however, said that pace of work on the project remained satisfactory and during 2006-2007, a total of 5,740 watercourses were lined against the set target of 5,000 out of which 1491 watercourses were near completion in Dadu, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Matiari, Tando Allahyar, Tando Mohammad Khan, Thatta, Karachi, Jacobabad, Qambar-Shahdadkot, Kashmore-Kandhkot, Larkana, Badin, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Tharparkar, Umerkot, Ghotki, Khairpur, Nawabshah, Naushero Feroz, Shikarpur and Sukkur.

According to officials, earthwork for lining of 6,299 more watercourses had also been completed and 1,847 more watercourses remained in process of earthwork in different parts of the province.—APP