BAHAWALPUR, Feb 24: The vast desert of Cholistan is neither in grip of severe water crisis, nor is its population migrating to other parts of the country.

This was stated by the vice-chairman and managing director, Cholistan Development Authority (CDA), Maj-Gen Abdul Razzaq (retired), at a press conference on Thursday.

In a strongly-worded rebuttal to a news published by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), recently, the CDA MD told journalists that during the recent years, to counter drought conditions, a number of water supply projects had been completed in Cholistan.

These projects, he said, included the construction of 61 ponds at a cost of Rs70 million under the World Bank-funded Drought Emergency Relief Assistance (DEAR) programme, besides four pipeline projects costing about Rs430 million under the Asian Development Bank's Drought Impact Mitigation Recovery Component (DIMRC) programme.

Giving details, he said each pond built at a cost of about Rs1000,000 having water capacity of four million US gallons would be used to collect rainwater from the catchment areas to cater to the needs of about 100 people, besides eight to 10,000 cattle heads for six to eight months.

Regarding the pipeline project, completed on Dec 31, 2004, he said the total length of the pipelines was 245km whereas the total cost of these was about Rs397 million.

The MD claimed that these four pipelines were benefiting over 30,000 people and 300,000 livestock, adding the project would supply water round the year, and would result in diminished population migration to the settled areas.

He hoped that by multiplication of livestock, the living standards of the people of Cholistan would improve in the coming years. It may be recalled that according to 1998 census, the human population of the Cholistan desert areas was 140,000, while the cattle heads were between 1500,000 and 1600,000, including 600,000 cows, 300,000 sheep, 250,000 goats and 200,000 camels.

Maj-Gen Razaq told a questioner that at every delivery point on the lengthy pipelines, a low-level reservoir of 20,000 gallons capacity with taps had been constructed. He concluded that three basic health units for Cholistan population and seven veterinary dispensaries were also established under the DIMRC programme in the desert.