ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senior Leader Senator Taj Haider expressed disappointment over complete omission of the most serious issue of sea intrusion at the International Water Conference organised by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday. In a statement, Senator Taj Haider said that during the hearings on the water issue in Karachi, he had personally submitted summaries and conclusions of six studies on sea intrusion to the court and the court was pleased to assure that the issue was a very serious one and would be taken up in the international conference that the court was planning. He said that it was not sweet water which was going into the sea. It is precious agricultural land of Pakistan that has been devoured by the sea, he added. He said that 2.5 million acres of Thatta and Badin districts had already been lost and the studies point out that if sea intrusion was not effectively checked then the sea would reach the city of Thatta by 2050 completely submerging the Indus Delta. The PPP leader said that if 32 Million Acre Feet (MAF) of fresh water per year was actually going into the sea as claimed, we would not be facing the problem of sea intrusion. The fact is that even the 10 MAF release downstream Kotri agreed upon as an interim measure pending detailed studies in the Inter Provincial Water Accord was not being provided, he maintained. He said that construction of a Carry Over dam at Diamer Bhasha would certainly serve to control heavy floods that come every eight to 10 years. The stored water could be used in subsequent years in a planned manner to make up for shortages in river flows. This would boost our agricultural economy. Taj Haider said that one major problem is that no agreed operational criteria had been framed for the already existing two dams or for the two link canals. Mangla and Tarbela are being operated as power plants and not as water reservoirs, giving priority to meet the irrigation needs of the provinces as laid down in the Water Accord. He said that water needed for irrigation is not allowed to flow downstream in order to maximise the generation of electricity. It was obvious that in the absence of an agreed operational criteria, Bhasha would be similarly operated. Wasn’t it a fact that the two link canals on Mehran at Chashma and Taunsa were also planned as flood canals but were later turned into perennial canals? he questioned Haider said that in these days of highly developed agricultural technology, there were so many ways not only to overcome water shortages but to multiply our agricultural yields. However, there was only one way to save depleting river deltas and to stop sea intrusion and that was to allow required quantities of fresh water to flow down to the sea, he concluded. Published in Daily Times, October 24th 2018.