LARKANA, May 26: Kambar-Shahdadkot district has been paying a high cost, in both human and economic terms, of poor management and decision-making on the part of irrigation authorities.

The current dilemma of farmers in the region is the looming threat to their rice crop sowing of which has already hit an inordinate delayed because of the authorities’ failure to release water in the irrigation channels.

The continued shortage of water has become so grave that growers are not even able to prepare their fields for sowing. Most farmers do not have enough water for their animals.

A recurring problem they have long been facing is the perpetual release of contaminated water making its way into their canals from Balochistan via the Khirthar mountain range. Around 18,600 acres of this cultivation belt close to the Sindh-Balochistan border which used to be known for wheat cultivation has been rendered infertile. The last wheat crop was cultivated in the area through 26 water courses emerging from the Rabi Shakh, a tributary of the Saifullah Magsi branch.

“What to say about water for sowing, there is not even enough water for animals,” said an exasperated Mohammad Ishaque Mughiri, the district president of the Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB). “This is the height of ignorance. We do not expect irrigation water to arrive in the Saifullah Magsi and S.K.T branches till the first week of June.”

Around 400,000 acres of land are cultivated in the areas through these two canals emerging from Balochistan. When contaminated water was released, thousands of people living in the surrounding areas, who use this water for drinking, fell ill.

“It was a drought-like situation,” said Mr Mughiri. “People, animals and land were in dire need of water. Cases of gastroenteritis began to spread here with hepatitis already being prevalent among the people.”

If water is released by early June, said Mr Mughiri, farmers would have a month’s window during which they could prepare the field for paddy and the sowing process could then begin by the first week of July.

But even then, he said, growers in Kambar-Shahdadkot region would be behind by a month-and-a-half of the suitable cultivation time.

Wajid Ali Chandio, whose family owns 12,000 acres of land next to the Saifullah Magsi and S.K.T branches in Shahdadkot, said that as people waited anxiously for water, irrigation authorities released highly contaminated water from last year’s rains into the Dhori Shakh near Chukhi area.

Mr Chandio said that the contaminated water was seriously affecting fertility of the land, and thus, growers’ livelihoods since they could not grow another crop, except rice. He wondered how small farmers and daily-wage earners would fare when rice factories in the district would stay closed.

There are more than 80 rice mills in Shahdadkot which employ a large number of daily-wage earners, said the Shahdadkot taluka SAB president, Khalid Umar Khoso.

He said that the underground water in the area had turned brackish, forcing people to get water from tubewells installed near Tanveri Shakh near Shahdadkot town.

Mr Khoso said that rice was also cultivated by water drawn from Ratodero Shakh, emerging from the Warah barrage.

He said that immediate release of water in the Saifullah Magsi and S.K.T branches would help recharge the subsoil water and assist in timely sowing of the rice crop.

Abdul Khalique Khoso, a grower from Qubo Saeed Khan village situated at the tail-end of the irrigation network was worried that even if water was released it might not reach his village on time. He said that big landlords who had their fields next tothe irrigation channels took a

big share of water for their lands first.

“We are already a month late in preparing our rice paddies,” he said. “Further delay would only reduce production.”

Meanwhile, sources in the irrigation department told Dawn that though some water had been released upstream into Saifullah Magsi branch, S.K.T branch and the North Western canal but it would not reach Kambar-Shahdadkot before June 15.

According to him, the total cultivable area fed by all three canals was almost 1.3 million acres.

On the other hand, executive engineer of the Saifulah Magsi branch, Mr Jalbani, when asked about the situation plainly replied, “You will get water only when the flow of Indus River improves.”