PESHAWAR, Feb 3: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government plans carrying out the Chashma Right Bank Canal (Lift-cum-Gravity-1) project on its own due to the federal government’s reluctance to fund it.

Israrullah Gandapur, a Dera Ismail Khan member of the provincial assembly, told Dawn on Friday that the government had established contacts with World Bank to get a funding line for CRBC (Lift-1) project, while Awami National Party Senator and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s member in National Finance Commission Haji Adeel said: “Chief Minister (Ameer Haider Khan Hoti) has given (us) assurance that work on CRBC (Lift-1) project will start before June 30, 2012.”

According to the relevant officials, the government is increasingly frustrated at the centre’s failure to begin work on CRBC (Lift-1) project despite repeated assurances.

“The federal government has been delaying the (launch of the) project on one pretext or the other,” said a provincial government document available with Dawn.

The delay, said a senior Khyber Pakhtunkhwa development planner, had already escalated the project’s estimated cost from around Rs25 billion in 2003-04 to Rs61 billion in early 2010.

According to the document, the project was approved by the Central Development Working Party on March 18, 2010. Despite ‘clearing’ it, CDWP referred the project to a committee to ‘look into its financing, engineering and economics’.

“Engineering and economics of the scheme has already been cleared by a technical committee of Pakistan Engineering Council long ago.”

Haji Adeel said the provincial government would make a belated allocation of Rs2 billion in its current financial year’s annual development programme, avoiding further delay.

The project, according to its planning documents, will bring 286,140 acres of ‘barren and desolate landscape’ in Dera Ismail Khan district under irrigation, setting in a ‘green revolution’ in the area.

Political circles believe that ANP as the main ruling coalition partner in the province has been feeling its political compulsions to launch the project, guarding against political repercussion in the Seraiki belt of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Mr Gandapur said: “there is a growing realisation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government as ANP knows that further delay on it could result in political problems for it.”

He said ANP knew well that the delay had already caused a growing sense of deprivation.

“They (ANP) know that there are already talks of creating a Seraiki province (by clubbing together parts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa forming the Seraiki belt),” he said.

The MPA said he received a ‘note’ from the provincial government, intimating that loan for CRBC (Lift-1) project had formally been sought from the World Bank in a recent meeting with the bank’s representatives at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House in Islamabad.

Senator Adeel said besides World Bank, the provincial government was also likely to establish contacts with China through the Economic Affairs Division, Islamabad, for seeking funds for the project.

Under the plan, water from the existing CRBC project will be lifted with the help of powerful electric-powered pumps to channelise a 37 miles long gravity canal to be built to irrigate uncultivated vast area between Suleiman range and on the right bank of the Indus River.

The ANP senator said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had announced during a visit to Peshawar in 2010 that the project would be provided funds from the federal government but no action had been taken.

“The province also has been taking up the matter at NFC platform but to no avail,” he said, adding that not a single paisa was released against Rs400 million reflected in the last financial year’s centre-funded Public Sector Development Program.”

This year, too, the federal government, said a Peshawar-based irrigation department official, had allocated Rs100 million in the current PSDP. “However, funds have not been released since the project awaits approval from the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council,” said the official.

He said after CDWP approval in March 2010, the project had not been forwarded to Ecnec for mandatory consent.