HYDERABAD: World Bank’s Task Team leader for multimillion dollar Sindh Barrages Improvement Programme (SBIP) accompanied by US irrigation expert visited Guddu barrage on Monday to apprise themselves of ongoing work on management and modernisation of Sukkur and Guddu barrages.

The WB representative, Francois Onimus, was briefed by SBIP project director Ghulam Mohiuddin Mughal and contractors’ representatives at a meeting which was attended by US expert Prof Dr Charles Burt, officers of UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) like Ahmed Junaid Memon and Umer Karim and Chris Hale, chief resident engineer (project’s rehabilitation works) at Guddu barrage.

Mr Onimus was informed about cost escalation of the Guddu barrage works project whose timeline had been extended to 2025 from previous 2021. Under SBIP, Guddu’s initial cost was Rs18,271 million inclusive of Sindh government’s 10pc share in the project which was Rs1,970m previously. But given devaluation of Pakistani rupee the cost was likely to escalate.

Mughal informed the visiting WB representative that 10 gates, out of barrage’s 65 gates in all, had been procured from Turkey and four would be installed by the end of April.

Work on Sukkur barrage would be completed by 2026 as it had not yet started, he said.

Mr Burt was keen to learn how the flow measurement was made at Guddu — the first barrage over the Indus river and discussed his presentations on calibration process and rating curves with irrigation officials. He emphasized the need for accuracy in flow measurement.

Chief Engineer Sardar Shah briefed Dr Burt at Sukkur barrage about calibration process and how rating curves were created by staff and informed the US expert that Indus river’s morphology was different from Mississippi river in North America.

He reportedly sensitized him to political expediencies involved in the management of water distribution.

The US expert shared his observations regarding calibration and gated structures for maintaining upstream flows and emphasised the need for calibration process and flow measurement.

The visiting WB official and the US expert left for Punjab from Guddu barrage where they would be visiting on-farm water management system in Bahawalpur.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2022