ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Chairperson Benazir Bhutto has expressed concern over the alarming water shortage in the country which threatened to produce famine-like conditions.

In a statement issued here by the party's media cell, Ms Bhutto said the PPP government had drawn up an ambitious plan to increase water resources of the country. This plan included lining of all canals between 1996 and 2006.

The PPP chairperson said the lining of canals would have produced two-and-a-half times the water projected for Kalabagh Dam every year, brining millions of acres under cultivation.

She asked the regime to explain what it had done about the small water dams that were being constructed by the PPP government from Khyber to Karachi with a view to providing potable as well as agricultural water to the people.

Ms Bhutto said she raised with international financial institution leaders the poverty and water issues and was concerned that neglect of water domestically had worsened the issue.

Lack of water during the Kharif season is a bad omen for the coming Rabi crops. More than half of Pakistan's population depends on agriculture as means of livelihood, she added. The PPP leader said water shortage was an indicator that the poverty situation was likely to worsen as the government entered its fifth year in power.

She said the government concentrated on bringing in expatriate technocrats who had little experience of grass-roots democracy. "Like most dictatorships, the Musharraf government believed that foreign educated English speaking employees of international financial institutions and multinationals would be a good public relations exercise with foreign power brokers," she added.

She said there was a school of thought which believed that a technocratic government could increase economic prosperity and pave the way for democracy. However, there are others, like the Pakistan People's Party, which believe that democracy and development go hand in hand.

The experience of the years since the PPP government was overthrown demonstrates that without democracy, economic independence is hard to achieve, she added.