PESHAWAR, Feb 10: Construction of Chashma Right Bank Canal (Gravity-cum-Lift-1) will let Khyber Pakhtunkhwa benefit from the unused part of its 8.78 million acres feet share in the waters of Indus river system. That part totalling 1.187maf water is currently used by Punjab for irrigation purposes, according to the relevant officials in Peshawar.

Officials said the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) had declared in the April 4, 2005 meeting that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa could use 1.187maf water required for operating CRBC-Lift-1.

They said water diversion to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from the Indus river system would reduce water supplies to Punjab.

“Punjab has been using our share of water for which it should compensate us,” Senator Haji Adeel, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s member in the National Finance Commission, told Dawn.

According to an irrigation development planner, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s water share under the 1991 inter-provincial accord is 8.78maf but it is unable to use it a hundred per cent due to insufficient irrigation infrastructure.

“Our actual average annual water use stands at around 6.5maf, leaving the remaining quantity unutilised,” he said, adding that the untapped water flowed to Punjab to help it meet its irrigation needs.

Senator Adeel said an exercise carried out by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government led it into knowing that the Punjab government had been the sole beneficiary due to his province’s insufficient irrigation infrastructure.

He said as calculated by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, the Punjab government raised Rs42 billion on account of water charges.

Around two maf water of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s annual share, according to Irsa calculations, remain unused because, said the irrigation official, the province did not have sufficient canal network to be able to utilise the allocated quantity of water.

An official, however, said the province won’t be able to use its water share a hundred per cent even after construction of CRBC Lift-1.

“Some 1.103maf of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s water share will still remain unused even after the completion of the Chashma Right Bank Canal (Lift-1) project,” he said.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti on Monday last said his government would execute the Lift-1 project on cost sharing basis, seeking loans from international lending institutions in addition to the federal government’s financial assistance.

Officials said the project would bring 286,000 cultivable barren acres under irrigation in Dera Ismail Khan, making use of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s unspent water to the benefit of thousands of farm families in an area where a sense of economic deprivation is deep rooted due to non-availability of irrigation water.

Israrullah Gandapur, a DI Khan MPA, told Dawn that the provincial bureaucracy had told the government that the province might lose a part of its water share if the water accord was renegotiated in an event of the likely creation of a new province.

He said the provincial government had been told that it might get the province’s share curtailed on the pretext that it had not improved its irrigation network since 1991, failing to make use of its untapped water against its share.

Senator Adeel, however, said: “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has asked the centre to give it some money so it could build a small dam at Munda or at another place on the Indus River. Water for operating the CRBC Lift-1 scheme will be pumped into it from the existing CRBC by powerful electric powered pumps.”