Hyderabad:
Several months of protests, engulfing each corner and corner of the Sindh, finally forced the provincial government to write a letter to convene the very delayed meeting of the Common Interest Council (CCI) to discuss the burning question of the construction of the channels.
Sindh chief secretary, Asif Hyder Shah, in a letter last week, not only asked for a CCI meeting, but also called to “cancel” the water availability certificate issued by the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) for the Cholistan canal.
“The Sindh province has serious reservations concerning the granting of the certificate by the IRSA … because the case does not fall under the water distribution agreement, 1991, therefore beyond the scope of the IRSA,” he wrote. “It has become a proven fact that currently all provinces are suffering from acute water shortage.”
He pointed out that Sindh being the lower bank province undergoes more than 50% of water shortage at the start of Kharif sowing seoms. He referred to the data of the IRSA itself which calculated a water deficit of 16.6% across the country. “… The data clearly indicates that enough water is not available in the system, therefore, the delivery of the certificate for new channels is unjustifiable.”
The CS has referred to paragraph 14 (d) of the 1991 agreement to affirm that if a province can “modify” the share of water between existing channels, new channel systems cannot be built. According to him, Punjab already had the ability of the irrigation network to draw water from the industrial river beyond its authorized share.
The CS has argued that said allowances can never be checked in accordance with the agreement until the release of river water towards the sea downstream from Kotri is finalized.
Consequently, the Kotri downstream river remains dry during most regions of the year, destroying the Delta of the Indus. “The new channel system cannot be designed on flood flows because they are uncertain,” said Shah. He compared the water discharge figures from 1976 to 1998 and from 1999 to 2022 to emphasize that the average annual discharge in the downstream kotri to the sea reduced by 26.67 MAF.
The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, at its meeting on February 7, 2024, had made it compulsory to request the approval of the CCI among the provinces for irrigation projects under construction within the framework of the development of the National Irrigation Network for Green Pakistan Initiative. “IRSA’s decision for the issuance of the CNO before the provinces’ consensus on the project and approval by the ICC is also against the spirit of the decision of the ECNEC.”
