ISLAMABAD, Nov 21: The Technical Committee on Water Resources, led by A.N.G Abbasi, will begin its week-long meeting here on Nov 22 to complete its recommendations on the construction of big dams.

Informed sources told Dawn here on Sunday that the meeting would continue its deliberations till Nov 27 to finalize its recommendations on the question of overall water availability that would determine whether sufficient amount of surplus water was available to make a big dam viable.

In previous meetings, Wapda had presented a total water availability of at least 148maf (million acre feet) which meant that over 22maf of water would be available for a new dam after meeting other requirements. Sindh, however, is not satisfied with these figures.

The committee has invited officials from the Indus River System Authority and the Water and Power Development Authority on Nov 23-24 for presentations on three aspects - the filling criteria for the Mangla Dam's proposed enhanced capacity, operational criteria for withdrawals to link canals and overall operation of future dams.

The sources said that discussions on these three inter-linked issues would determine how the authorities planned to fill the additional capacity of the Mangla Dam and on what patterns they intended to release water to link canals in both Rabi and Kharif seasons, and based on the plans how the irrigation authorities would fill and deplete the new reservoirs.

The committee will study these presentations and formulate its recommendations on the question of which of the two -Kalabagh and Bhasha - dams should be taken up for construction. The sources said the committee planned to submit to the government its interim or partial report on water availability by the end of this month or early next month.