Daily Times

KARACHI: Caretaker Sindh Chief Minister (CM) Fazlur Rehman, on Thursday, decided to deploy Pakistan Rangers at different canals, distributaries and channels to stop water to ensure the provision of water at tail end.

The CM took this decision while presiding over a meeting of Irrigation Department to review water positions at different barrages. The meeting which was held at the CM House was attended by the Caretaker Irrigation Minister Mushtaq Shah, Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput and Secretary Irrigation Syed Jamal Shah.

Secretary Irrigation Jamal Shah while briefing the CM said that water position had considerably improved at the Guddu Barrage.

According to Jamal Shah, the water position at Guddu Barrage upstream was 81328 cusecs and downstream was 63948, the water position at Sukkur Barrage upstream was 48401 cusecs upstream and the water position at Gotri Barrage was 6880 cusecs upstream and 1581 cusecs downstream.

During the briefing the caretaker CM was told that the allocation for Guddu Barrage was 31100 cusecs out of which Balochistan withdrew 6700 cusecs while the allocation for Sukkur Barrage was 5600 and Balochistan’s share was 2200 cusecs. He was told that Kotri Barrage’s total output was 32500 cusecs.

The CM was also given particular information regarding the withdrawal of water from several barrages. He was told that from Guddu Barrage Begari Sindh drew 3054 cusecs, the desert pat feeder drew 7700 cusecs and the Ghotki Feeder drew 6626 cusecs of water.

The CM was informed that from the Sukkur Barrage, North western Canal withdrew 3100 cusecs of water, Rice Canal withdrew 4040 cusecs, Dadu Canal 2360 cusecs, Nara Canal 10500 cusecs, Khairpur Feeder East 1415 cusecs, Rohri Canal 10000 cusecs and Khairpur Feeder West withdrew 1155 cusecs of water.

The CM was told that the withdrawal in Kotri Barrage from Kalri Baghar was 2660 cusecs, Akram wah was 640 cusecs while the withdrawal from Pinyari and New Fuleli was 1530 cusecs and 2125 cusecs respectively.

The CM was then told that the total withdrawal of canals of Sindh was 56905 cusecs.

The chief minister said that Nara Canal had the capacity of 13649 cusecs against which it withdrew only 10500 cusecs.

“This is not a bad situation but even then there is acute shortage at the end of Nara Canal,” the chief minister commented during the meeting.

On this the secretary said that there was water theft on different distributaries and added that so far 50 FIRs had been registered.

Caretaker Chief Minister decided to deploy Rangers in aid to the police so that water theft could be stopped.

“My objective is to provide water to all the tail-enders- therefore I am going to deploy Rangers and the cases of theft would be registered directly against the landlord not against their kamdars (managers),” committed the CM.

The chief minister directed the Secretary irrigation to identify the spots of canals and distributaries and branches from where water was being stolen and hand over the list to the Home Secretary. Home Secretary would then coordinate with Rangers for their deployment.

The chief minister also spoke to DG Rangers regarding deployment of Rangers along the canals.

Published in Daily Times, June 15^th 2018.