HYDERABAD: Even after passage of eight years to its inauguration, rain-fed Darawat Dam has not been able to harvest enough rainwater to be utilised for irrigating land in its command area, nor the little water available in the reservoir can be released for a host of technical issues.

The dam — a brainchild of PPP government when Asif Ali Zardari was president in 2008 — was built at a cost of Rs11.67bn and completed in 2014 but its utility remains to be proved. It is purely a rainwater harvesting dam but strangely, the rainfall has not yet filled the dam till this day to its optimum level of 112.5 metres.

Then president Zardari had inaugurated the reservoir in March 2013 and remarked optimistically at the ceremony: “When I will visit this place next time I will see cotton cultivated here.” Unfortunately, his words have still not seen the light of the day.

According to Chief Engineer of Small Dams, Shafqat Wadhu, the dam’s current level is 108 metres — four metres short of the optimum level when its spillways will have to be opened. “The dam can, however, feed agricultural land at the current level but still water can’t be released due to a number of land related issues,” Wadhu said, adding that the level of 106 metres was said to be sufficient for releasing water for irrigating land in the command area.

Even back to back rains have failed to fill the dam to its capacity. The dam was to store flows of Nai Baran, one of the old natural waterways in the area, which were otherwise used by locals to irrigate their land during rainy season.

The dam is to irrigate around 25,000 acres of land through a canal originating from the dam and its distributaries. At the time of the commencement of the project the PPP government had decided to grant land to landless peasants and a few farmers did get land for cultivation, according to a report.

The dam falls within jurisdiction of two districts, Thatta and Jamshoro. Its structure falls within Jamshoro district which is spread over 10,500 acres with a storage capacity of 121,600 acre feet and the command area is to be developed in Thatta district.

The command area’s development means creation of watercourses for irrigating land of the farmers who are supposed to get land under the government’s scheme. “Around 25 farmers are given land in the area but we need to conduct a survey of land in the area,” said Thatta deputy commissioner Ghazanfar Qadri.

Compensation for dam’s land not yet paid

Khalid Detho claimed that his land was used for building the reservoir and he had not yet received compensation. “There are pieces of surveyed lands that have been used in the dam upstream and the land owners are still waiting for compensation,” said Detho.

The dam’s control had remained with Wapda that had built it for a long time. It was only in 2020 when the dam’s operations were taken over by Sindh government’s irrigation department.

“The irrigation water is to be supplied to farmers who have legal land documents. We had sent some documents for verification to revenue department as per procedure but have not received them back,” said Wadhu.

Initially, it was also claimed by government functionaries that a high efficiency irrigation system would be provided to land allottees and agriculture department was to handle it but since the command area’s development itself has been put on the backburner the high efficiency irrigation system too takes a back seat.

The dam had a test run in 2018 for a few minutes. It has a major canal on the right side, two distributaries and one minor that will irrigate land in future.

As a federal funded project, the dam — located 135km north east of Karachi and 70km west of Hyderabad — was completed on Aug 31, 2014 by a Chinese firm, which started work on it in January 2010 in Jhangri village, Jamshoro district.

The dam proves a bane for locals

The dam’s site is suitable for a spate-irrigation in which seasonal flows are received in a torrent or stream. Nai Baran carries such hill torrents emanating from lower Khirthar mountain range in Balochistan’s Bella district during rains.

The communities dependent on Nai Baran were said to have been affected and they claimed the dam’s storage structure had submerged their cultivable land and deprived the population living downstream of seasonal flows of the hill torrent which they had been using for agricultural purposes before the construction of the dam.

Sindh Chamber of Agriculture leader Nabi Bux Sathio, who had visited the dam in 2019 said: “I think the dam is not irrigating even 25 acres out of 25,000 acres in the command area. We fear the dam’s structure will fall into disuse,” he claimed.

He feared the dam’s project would prove to be a repeat of the Salinity Control and Reclamation Project (SCARP) and Chotiyari reservoir in Sanghar. “The tube-wells installed under the SCARP that were supposed to control salinity in waterlogged area have been gathering rust for years and the same is the case with Chotiyari reservoir which has destroyed more land due to seepage than benefit it through its water,” he argued.

Darawat, he said, could become an attractive tourist spot like Rawal dam. “I think we are not ready to look at these aspects,” he deplored.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2022