HYDERABAD, Nov 8: The provincial management of the National Programme for the Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) had recommended to the federal government three-year extension in the programme to meet the target of lining 22,000 remaining watercourses by the end of 2008, said NPIW Project Director of Mohammad Younus Daga.

Talking to journalists after inaugurating a training workshop on NPIW at a hotel here Mr Daga said that 11,000 of 33,000 targeted watercourses had been lined under the five-year programme launched in 2004 and it was difficult to complete the remaining watercourses in time.

He said that the field teams had worked beyond their target of 5,000 watercourses by lining 5,071 watercourses in 2005-06 and 5,740 in 2006-07. In comparison to 6,500 watercourses lined over past 27 years, the management of NPIW had lined 11,000 watercourses within two years, he said.

Mr Daga said that the programme monitoring unit was using satellite (GIS) technology in its work and Sindh was on top in all the provinces in performance.

He said in answer to a question that Rs7 billion had been distributed among 11,000 Farmers Associations and 18,000 applications were still in the pipeline. Rs300 million had been reported as outstanding against 500 associations for doing lesser work or not starting work at all.