SWAT: Flash floods are common in Mataltan village located in upper reaches of Swat district and cause a lot of trouble for locals by washing away water channels.

Repair of these lifelines usually takes heavy financial and physical toll on locals.

However, 13 recently built improved watercourses have brought a respite to the local farmers.

Standing on the bank of a newly constructed water channel, which irrigates the fields of over 500 families residing in several villages in Mataltan area of Swat, Noor Afzal said that they heaved a sigh of relief after construction of the water channel around two months ago.

“Our crops are now getting the required irrigation water as its quantity has increased with the construction of water channel,” Mr Afzal, the general secretary of Community-Based Disaster Risk Management Committee, told Dawn.

Official says 13 water channels completed under a project while work under way on others

The construction of irrigation channels has been funded by Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (Glof-II) project and executed in the areas affected by the glacier lake outburst flood including Upper and Lower Chitral, Upper Dir and Swat.

GLOF-II project is funded by Green Climate Fund and implemented by federal ministry of climate change in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme and government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

About 1,000 to 1,500 villagers used to repair the damaged water channel in three days as the affected area was rocky and they had no modern tools, Haji Gulzada told this scribe. He added that they used to gather the villagers by making announcements in the mosques.

In the first week of August, when the country was engulfed by the heat wave, Gulzada was wearing traditional waistcoat and a thick shawl to keep him warm as the area is very cold.

He said that the villagers had only a few months to grow crops as in rest of the year the area was covered by mounds of snow.

“Now we can easily irrigate our fields twice a week after the construction of the water channel,” he added.

Before the construction of the water channel by the Glof-II project, the villagers were unable to provide the required irrigation water to the fields due to broken and leaking water channel. “Now we irrigate our crops twice a week. Our fields need more water as the area is rocky,” he said.

In Gabral, the faraway area of Kalam in Swat, the wooden irrigation channel has been replaced by the cemented one under the project.

Dildar Khan, a former nazim of Gabral area, said that the villagers used to cut the precious conifer trees, hallowing them from one side for using it as irrigation channel. The wooden irrigation channel was wasting water and it was unable to accommodate the water required for irrigation of several villages, he said.

“The cemented irrigation channel has saved our conifer trees as we have stopped its cutting for making irrigation channel,” he said. He added that like other areas of Kalam, Gabral was also producing the most delicious potatoes and turnips and yield the two vegetables was increased with the construction of irrigation channel.

Asked why the vegetables were delicious in Gabral, the former nazim said that the environment was clean and cold and they gave glacial water to the crops that’s why the vegetables were tasty as compared to other parts of the country.

In Jiskan area of Uthror village council, irrigation water has been arranged from around four kilometres away spring located on peak of a mountain.

Mohammad Usman, a local farmer, told Dawn that prior to construction of the irrigation channel, they were able to irrigate their fields once a month from a small spring, which was not enough due to which the yield was very low.

“With the construction of the irrigation channel, now we have enough water and irrigate our crops after each five days,” he said. Before construction of the irrigation channel, he said, one kanal piece of land used to produce five bags of potato that increased to 20 bags with sufficient water supply.

The deputy director of planning on-farm water management, Mohammad Asif, told Dawn that the construction of 13 water channels had so far completed in the areas affected by glacial lake outburst flood while the construction of more water channels was in progress.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2021