HYDERABAD: Defending Sindh’s stance on Punjab’s controversial plan to create six canals, Irrigation Minister Jam Khan Shoro has said that the reservations are not unnecessary, but with evidence of water flows based on data. He pointed out that Pakistan did not have the required flows in the Indus for new canals.

He was speaking at inauguration ceremony of first-ever Hydro Informatics Centre (HIC), set up in the department’s regional office, on Saturday.

The minister lauded his department’s officers for establishing the centre, and obs­e­­rved that it was a big achievement to centralise the entire record of the department.

He praised the officials for having streamlined water related engineering data which, he said, would help Sindh government build a strong case at different forums regarding its water share.

One having data is considered ‘knowledgeable’ in this era of technology, according to him.

“We say Pakistan doesn’t have required flows and, therefore, new canals can’t be built as argued by Punjab on the basis of 1976-2022 flows patterns,” said Jam Khan Shoro, who is Sindh’s member in the Executive Committee of National Econ­omic Council (Ecnec).

“We need to look at flows patterns post climate change phenomenon between 1999-2022 and you will understand that hardly less than 8-10MAF water flows, not 27MAF as claim by Punjab, are available at Kotri [Barrage],” he argued.

The minister insisted that Sindh’s stance is based on the data available with the irrigation department. He complained that Sindh doesn’t get water as is otherwise required for Kharif. “We get water flows in June, but then the assured supplies for rice cultivation remain unavailable,” he said.

He agreed with Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) President Syed Mehmood Nawaz Shah while discussing monitoring of Indus River water quality. “Ninety per cent major cities of Pakistan are located off Indus River and their effluent and drainage water is disposed of in Sindh to pollute the water flows,” he said, and added that now the new centre would also help government undertake a regular checking of Indus water quality.

Mr Shoro said that Sindh was dependent entirely on surface irrigation water because its groundwater was brackish. Irrigation department would also be establishing ‘weather station’ to have real time data of rainfall in the country and its likely impact in Sindh insofar as behaviour of the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD) and Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) is concerned.

He said that Environment and Climate Change Minister Dost Ali Rahimoon rightly mentioned that Pakistan had hardly 0.8pc carbon footprints but in terms of climate change-driven disasters, Pakistan had been suffering more and quite frequently. “But when it comes to Pakistan it is again Sindh province that gets impacted the most in the backdrop of climate change-driven weather patterns,” Shoro asserted.

This situation demands that we must have authentic and accurate data based information available to us. Scattered data doesn’t support anything.

According to the minister, cotton production is badly impacted in the country this season due to weather pattern. If there is less rainfall, Sindh will be hit most and again if there were heavy rainfall the province suffers.

Climate Change Minister Dost Ali Rahimoon said that this center’s establishment was great leap forward in organizing data management considering the fact that that agriculture and irrigation were interlinked and Sindh’s economy was dependent on agriculture sector.

Shoro said it was need of the hour that seed compatible with climate change must be used in farm sector, adding that recent heatwave had undermined cotton production in Sindh. He said Sindh government had rightly taken up amendments to the issue of Irsa Act 1992 with the federation to oppose them strongly.

Mehmood Nawaz Shah said that we would have to keep pace with modern and changing world’s dynamics. He said that expansion was limitless if irrigation department was aiming for it. “We need to focus that we have quality satellite imageries relating to crop cultivation,” he said, and added that this centre was a good beginning and things should not stop here as it would be helpful in planning future strategies. He said that Pakistan had inherited colonial era irrigation system and after that it was good to see that this centre would start working. Sindh province should monitor Indus River water quality, he added.

Irrigation Secretary Zarif Iqbal Khero gave HIC’s background, mentioning that accurate statistics were sine qua non for future planning. He said HIC was founded to digitise the raw manual data. He said that this centre would have data from canals, lakes, river flows and gauges at barrages. He said that this data would be displayed in HIC and shared with stakeholders.

Sindh Assembly Member Dr Sikandar Shoro also spoke.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2024