SUKKUR, March 3: The Sindh chief minister has said that renovation work of the Sukkur Barrage will be undertaken with the help of a British company which had constructed the barrage in 1932.

Chief Minister Ali Mohammad Mahar was talking to the provincial irrigation secretary during his visit of the barrage here on Wednesday. He promised that adequate funds would be allocated for repairing the barrage on which agriculture of his province mostly depended.

He said that the UK company had not charged any amount for the repair and span change of the barrage in 1983 but now they had asked it to charge for the repair.

On a question about a GHQ team which had visited the barrage and then submitted a report to President Gen Pervez Musharraf, the chief minister said that he was not aware about the report or action taken by the president on it.

He, however, said that if expenditure of the barrage renovation went beyond their resources, they would seek help from the federal government. The chief minister expressed satisfaction from the immediate efforts made by the irrigation department for filling a ditch that had developed in the lower part of the barrage.

The irrigation secretary, Bashir Dahar, briefing the chief minister, said that no major repair of the barrage had been carried out after 1983. He said that on Jan 25 during the annual canal closure season, it was revealed that a huge ditch had appeared between the gate 1 and 2, posing danger to the barrage.

He said that the ditch started developing in 2,002 and as the officials at that time did not paid attention towards it, it enhanced in 2,003 and 2,004, which become even more dangerous for the structure of the barrage.

Mr Dahar said that the barrage repair work required huge funding for which a grant from the federal government would also be needed. He said that the Sukkur Barrage was designed to discharge 1.2 million cusecs of water but due to a technical reason, its 10 spans had been closed down, which had reduced the water flow to 900,000 cusecs.

He warned that with the passage of time, the barrage was becoming vulnerable. He said that the more than 1.2 cusecs of water had flown through the barrage in 1973 but in the present situation, it could not tackle such a huge flow.

Earlier, the Sindh chief minister attended a briefing by Sukkur DCO Abdul Qadir Mangi on renovation and beautification of Lab-i-Mehran, a recreation spot of the city.