LAHORE/ISLAMABAD – The Indus River System Authority (IRSA) decided in a meeting chaired by its Chairman Rao Irshad held on Friday to allocate 45 percent of Punjab’s share of water to other provinces.
It was decided in the meeting that Punjab would surrender its water share by almost half and the province would get 18,000 cusecs of water. The meeting indicated that Sindh would get about 50,000 cusecs of water from the Mangla Dam for Kharif crops.
The emergency meeting was called to resolve water shortages because of the the persistence of cold weather across the country that has resulted in low water inflows into reservoirs. The IRSA chairman told the meeting that a sudden decline in temperatures had dropped water levels in the Jhelum, Chenab, Kabul and Sindh rivers.
Issues related to water management and provincial water requirements were also discussed in detail during the meeting. Agriculture experts and farmers bodies strongly criticised the decision to reduce Punjab’s water share. Agri Forum Pakistan Chairman Ibrahim Mughal told Pakistan Today that Punjab produced over 70 percent of the country’s crops and the decision would adversely affect the province’s agricultural productivity.
Mughal said that cropping patterns in the province had changed dramatically, but the IRSA was unable to comprehend this reality. Mughal said that the days of farmers sowing cotton in April were long gone and now, after the influx of biotechnology, cotton sowing began in January. Cotton had already been sowed on around 800,000 acres in Punjab by April, which required water.
He stated that in the case of the Kharif crop, Punjab needed 37.07 cusecs of water, Sindh 33.95 cusecs, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 5.20 cusecs and Balochistan required 2.85 cusecs of water. He said the decision would badly affect the Kharif crops in Punjab and the provincial government should take up the matter with Islamabad. Mughal said Punjab had always been treated as a scapegoat.
He said that neither the other provinces nor IRSA realised that they were asking for water for the provinces that had always opposed the development of water reservoirs. These double standards should not be tolerated any more, he added. Kisan Board Pakistan Information Secretary Haji Muhammad Ramzan also endorsed Mughal’s point of view.
He told Pakistan Today that farmers were already facing water shortage and this move would aggravate the situation further. He said that earlier, farmers got water from the irrigation system on a weekly basis and after this decision it would be a miracle if farmers got water even on a fortnightly basis. However, another agriculture expert Munawar Hasan believed that in the early Kharif season, Punjab did not have a heavy water requirement.
He said that it was not a new move on the part of the IRSA. However, he said that the decision would have a negative effect on power generation. An official source said that because of low inflows the Tarbela reservoir was left with 0.04 million acre feet of water, which was 2.9 feet above the dead level of 1,378 feet. Punjab approved the recommendation of releases from the Mangla Dam in order to meet the water requirements of Sindh.
