PESHAWAR, July 2: The water table in Peshawar and surrounding areas is gradually falling despite widespread rain and snowfall, according to officials.

Public health engineering department officials said the water table had fallen from 15 to 20 feet in the Peshawar valley, affecting the performance of tubewells in many parts of the city.

The water table, engineers said, had gone down in other parts of the province as well, particularly its southern belt and the adjacent tribal areas, causing shortage of water.

The drought-like situation, which started in 2000, had affected over 2.2 million acres of farmlands in the province, according to a report compiled by the planning, environment and development department in 2001. The situation had forced a large number of people of southern districts to migrate to other areas.

A PHED official told this reporter that the situation would continue unchanged unless the highland region and plain areas of the province received heavy snowfalls and rains in the winter.

He said the province received considerable snowfall and rain in previous months yet it failed to improve the situation. The entire region needed more rain in the coming season to raise the water table, he added.

Many tube-wells ran dry in the city following which town municipal administrations had to connect additional pipes to make them operational. The residents of Hayatabad, University Town, Shaheen Town, Canal Town, etc., are facing water shortage.

However, tehsil municipal officials hope that the situation will improve within next few weeks, saying water table comes up in mid-July. In Town-I alone, they said, 200 tubewells were in operation and added that capacity of each tube-well was around 10,000 gallons per hour.