HYDERABAD, Jan 2: The project of Kalabagh dam is a violation of water accords as there is no mention of any dam in them. This was stated at a meeting of the Sindh Abadgar Board here on Saturday.

The president of the board, Mr Abdul Majeed Nizamani, presided over the meeting. It appealed to the president and prime minister to abandon the idea of the project in the larger interest of the country.

The meeting demanded that President Gen Musharraf should order an inquiry against Wapda as to why it had given a "pre-fixed" site to its own consultants in "terms of reference" and why they were asked to design the project on the basis of mid-level sluicing for silt which would silt up the dam in two years.

It alleged that Wapda misguided the federal government in respect of capacity for storage and power generation of the dam. The meeting claimed that at a meeting at the Sindh governor's house on Aug 25, 2003, President Musharraf had directed the Wapda chairman to conduct a study of the Cutzarra dam but Wapda confused Cutzarra with Skardu although the distance between the two places was 22 kilometres.

It said there was a world of difference between storage capacity and power generation capacity at Skardu and Cutzarra. It wondered when Irsa had rejected construction of the Kalabagh dam on technical basis on Oct 22, 1996, and the project had been rejected by three assemblies, why it had not been abandoned.

The meeting demanded the water accord should be implemented in letter and spirit in the larger interest of the country and a reservoir should be constructed at Cutzarra site as a carry over dam. They meeting claimed that the Cutzarra dam would have a storage capacity of 35MAF and generate 15000MW of electricity.