SUKKUR/HYDERABAD: The remainder parts of the damaged gate No. 47 at Sukkur Barrage were dismantled by engineers on Wednesday night and the process for installation of parts of the new gate being manufactured at Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works started on Thursday.

According to Sukkur Barr­age’s Chief Engineer Mansoor Memon, the parts including horizontal and vertical girders and skin plate have arrived. The installation process had been started and it would take a few days to complete as it was a delicate procedure, he said.

A cofferdam and a caisson gate for facilitating replacement of the gate were built round the gate No.47 on June 27 and dewatering machines continued to pump water out of the pit, still around 13-foot water remained there, according to the CE.

Seven of the barrage’s gates suffered damage on June 20. Of them, upper part of the gate No.47 was washed away by the flows, which also caused a bend in gate No.44, while the remaining five gates had developed cracks. Except for gate No.47, the other gates had been repaired without having to remove them from their place.

The new gate being installed now will be replaced again under the World Bank-funded Sindh Barrages Improvement Programme under which only one gate (gate No.36) has been replaced recently by a Chinese firm, which is undergoing trial.

Sindh irrigation authorities had announced that Karachi Shipyard had would deliver the new gate by July 20 but it manufactured the parts 10 days earlier which were being brought to the barrage, said sources.

The barrage received 121,951 cusecs flows at the upstream and 51,910 cusecs at the downstream on July 11 and the canals on the right bank presently faced water shortage.

Water supply into Khirthar Canal had not yet been restored completely since the two gates were damaged, heightening concerns of growers whose standing crops of rice, cotton, sugar cane and other crops other crops were withering without water.

Growers protest at the barrage

A large number of growers from Qambar-Shahdadkot district arrived in procession at Sukkur Barrage and staged a demonstration against irrigation department’s officials, accusing them of causing water shortage.

They raised slogans of “Give us water” and complained that since the June 20 incident at Sukkur Barrage, water supply into Khirthar Canal had not been restored fully.

The protesters’ leaders Mohammad Moosa, Ali Murad, Ali Dino and others feared feared that growers would incur unbearable financial losses and consequently thou­sands of farmers might become jobless if water was not released into the canal immediately.

They held the irrigation department officials responsible for the situation and demanded strict action against them.

The demonstrators had also staged a sit-in on the road but dispersed peacefully after the irrigation officials assured them of the restoration of water supply soon.—Mohammad Hussain Khan in Hyderabad also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2024