THIS refers to the report ‘Improved watercourses bring respite to Swat farmers’ (Aug 9), which talked about the innovation of moving away from wooden watercourses made by felling trees and carving hollow wooden pipes to concrete watercourses and challenges therein.

Most countries are moving away from brick-lined or concrete watercourses to PVC-piped watercourses. These pipes do not allow any water leaks and can be joined with a solution which is not only quick, but also very effective. There are close to 100,000 kucha watercourses in Pakistan. Some of them are converted to brick-lined and fewer still to concrete.

In total, our watercourses leak about 12 million acre feet (MAF) of water. The combined capacity of Tarbela and Mangla dams is just 13.8 MAF. If we replace our watercourses with PVC pipes, we will save almost as much as is the combined capacity of both Mangla and Tarbela dams. Both PVC and PVC pipes are made in Pakistan.

While dams are good, PVC-piped watercourses are even better. Also, they can be converted into piped watercourses in less than two years’ time with the fraction of the cost and effort of a dam, which should also be built in parallel.

S. Nayyar Iqbal Raza
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2021