ISLAMABAD, Sept 19: The international expert appointed by the World Bank for investigations into the non-performance of Pakistan’s telemetry system has found faults in the software and data-recording mechanism of the Rs400 million project.

The Indus River System Authority (Irsa), which was briefed by the independent expert about his ‘inception report’ on Wednesday, however, asked the expert to also look into the hardware side of the project, Irsa Chairman Shuja Ahmad Junejo told Dawn after the meeting.

He said the Irsa had convened the meeting with the single-point agenda of checking the telemetry system.

Ian McLaurn, a Canadian expert appointed by the World Bank on Pakistan’s request a few months back, has submitted an inception report to the Irsa.

The expert is required to determine why the system designed to remove inter-provincial misunderstanding about the water situation did not work. The expert visited Pakistan twice and examined the system besides holding meetings with relevant stakeholders. He would be visiting again in the next few weeks before submitting a final report by December this year.

Mr Junejo said the telemetry committee has been expanded to have a broad-based representation. Besides the Irsa members, one member each from the provinces would interact with the independent expert and work as focal points on the telemetry system. He said the Irsa has asked the expert to concentrate more on the hardware side of the system, including its equipment, installation and design and planning, to see why the system failed to work.

He said the real objective of the appointment of the independent expert was to ensure that the real cause of the problem is identified for smooth functioning of the system because it was in the interest of all provinces and stakeholders to remove the element of mistrust.

Responding to a question, he said the storage level in dams was depleting but that was mostly because of reduction in river flows and an effort was being made to reduce provincial indents for the best optimal level with the cooperation of the provinces.

He, however, said it was the maturity period for crops and a substantial reduction could not be made in provincial water shares.

He said the reduction in storage level and river flows was a natural phenomenon and sometimes occurred at the fag end of the Kharif season. He said the Irsa was currently working on water probabilities for the next Rabi season and the final situation would be known by the end of this month.

He said the provinces were fully cooperating towards utilisation of their water shares and for efficient functioning of the telemetry system.