DADU: The danger of Manchhar Lake overtopping its banks during floods has been reduced by 70 per cent after increase in number of discharge gates from five to 12 at Aral Wah head regulator, which will help enhance the discharge from 12,000 cusecs to 52,000 cusecs and bring the lake’s level down from two inches to one foot within 24 hours, according to irrigation officials.

A World Bank mission comprising Ahsen Tehsin, Rehan Hyder, Ms Nihan Rafique, project director Javed Memon and Zahid Sheikh, which is currently on a three-day visit to review progress on the WB-funded Sindh Resilience Project (SRP) and Sindh Flood Emergency Rehabilitation Project (SFERP) was informed at its first review meeting with irrigation officials in Karachi on Wednesday that the lake’s embankment had also been raised by another two feet throughout its stretch of 30 kilometres and widened from 20 feet to 30 feet.

The SFERP is concerned with repairing the damage caused by floods in 2022 and has undertaken rehabilitation activities to normalise daily life in flood-hit areas.

The meeting was informed that 11 small dams had been built in areas surrounding Karachi to control urban flooding under this project, three pumping stations had been rehabilitated in Khairpur district for the disposal of stagnant rainwater and a storm water drain was constructed in Shaheed Benazirabad town to avert flooding of area due to rains.

The meeting was told that SRP had so far been able to build 70 small dams in the drought-hit areas of the province for the provision of drinking water as well as for irrigation purposes, which led to harvest of bumper agricultural produce in the areas like Thar where it had helped local population to have two crops in a year bringing an overall change in the socio- economic conditions by raising their living standards.

The meeting said the impact assessment study of building the small dams was being carried out by Mehran University of Engineering and Technology which would be completed by Aug 31, 2024, and the SRP was scheduled to close on June 30.

The meeting also reviewed utilisation of funds under both the projects and found out that the funds allocated for the activities had been fully utilised in a transparent manner.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2024