ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: The Ministry of Water and Power announced on Wednesday that a telemetry system at all the 23 sites of the country had become operational and would remove apprehensions about water utilization by different shareholders.

That would ensure better water management and accurate distribution of water among provinces and its monitoring.

A meeting presided over by Water and Power Minister Liaqat Ali Jatoi had asked Wapda and the company concerned to make operational all the 23 sites of Telemetry System by the end of October.

The matter was later taken up with the Sindh and Balochistan governments to resolve pending issues, particularly the security concerns, and chief ministers of both the provinces had assured every help to Wapda in making the telemetry sites operational.

Now the four provinces and the federal government have been provided with a monitoring system, backed by computerized recordings, through which they can monitor real-time water flows.

The minister said in a statement that Pakistan "has one of the best canal irrigation systems in the world" but so far it was not equipped with a scientific system to provide accurate, reliable and timely information about the installations at the barrages and availability of water in the rivers.

In the absence of accurate and reliable data, neither better water management nor planning can be done, nor can a situation of total trust among all the water users (entities) be achieved. In the absence of any scientific system, this dependence for information paves way to a no-trust situation, hampering harmony among the provinces.

The statement said that the automatic telemetry system will help evolve a better water management system, taking into account all the shortcomings of current manual procedures and processes.

The project aims at achieving the availability of online and accurate information of water availability and flow situation at all dams and barrages which is transmitted to all the authorities concerned. The information received and processed has the confidence of all stakeholders to maintain databases at each location, which could subsequently be used for analyses and planning, and to have a flexible system capable of managing gate operations at barrages remotely if so required.

The design of the system is such that no human interference in data acquisition, communication or processing is possible, the statement said. The project area for data collection is from Tarbela to Kotri on all the rivers of Indus Basin in Pakistan and has 23 sites.

The monitoring locations include federal and provincial capitals. They include two dams, 16 barrages/headwork, 47 canals and eight monitoring locations.