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Punjab Irrigation Department has closed its major canals including Upper Chenab emanating from Marala head-works on river Chenab and Upper Jhelum starting from Mangla Dam for a month long annual cleaning, Consultant Punjab Irrigation M.H. Siddiqui told Business Recorder here on Saturday.
He said in view of limited irrigation water needs of the provinces, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has reduced water releases from Tarbela dam on river Indus to 10,000 cusecs and from Mangla dam to 5,200 cusecs. This water is mainly being used for generation of electricity from hydropower houses of the two dams.
He said Punjab will be using about 18000 cusecs water from the water distribution system, 5000 cusecs water of Mangla dam, 5200 cusecs of river Chenab and 8,000 cusecs of river Indus till 31st January 2010 for sowing the delayed winter crops like sunflower, fodder, vegetables etc.
He said Punjab irrigation department will continue to release 8000 cusecs water drawn from river Indus into Thal and Taunsa Panjnad link canals to meet water needs of south Punjab consisting of Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur divisions till end of next month.
Meanwhile due to persistent cold and dry weather during the past two months, water inflow at the rim stations of the four live rivers has come down to 35,000 cusecs only. The current water inflow in Tarbela dam on river Indus is 17,500 cusecs, in river Kabul at Nowshera 7800 cusecs, in river Chenab at Marala 5,200 cusecs and river Jhelum is pouring 4,900 cusecs water into Mangla dam.
According to data released by Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) about river flows and reservoirs level, Sindh Irrigation department has stopped water releases from Sukkur Barrage towards Kotri Barrage. This last barrage on river Indus, near Kotri received a meagre quantity of 2305 cusecs fresh water on Saturday that would dry up in a couple of days.
Traditionally, the people of the area would have to wait for nearly six months henceforth to look for any further inflow of fresh water in the barrage. The current upstream water inflow in Guddu barrage is 26,000 cusecs out of which Sindh Irrigation department is discharging 23700 cusecs of water downstream towards the Sukkur barrage, which is the backbone of the agriculture sector of the Sindh province.
Commenting on reduction of water releases in such large quantities from Tarbela and Mangla dams, the Pepco engineers said that the electricity shortfall has crossed over 4000 MW resulting in daily load shedding of seven to eight hours in the country. Pepco produces more than 6200 MW hydel electricity from its Tarbela, Mangla and Ghazi Barotha hydropower generation units.
Meanwhile the agriculturists' associations Pakistan Kissan Mahaz, Kissan Board Pakistan, Agri-forum and others have criticised Pepco's decision to increase electricity tariff from next month and said it would substantially increase the cost of agriculture production and reduce the per acre yield.
President Agri-forum, Ibrahim Moghal said that drought conditions and closure of irrigation canals have forced farmers to run tube wells on electricity and diesel for irrigation purposes. If the government does not provide subsidised electricity and diesel to the farmers' one million tube wells would be shutdown.
However Pepco has maintained that agriculture sector is still highly subsidised sector, whereas, Pepco is managing the corporatized entities (ex-Wapda Disco) through independent Board of Directors. A Pepco Headquarter spokesman said that the tariff of all Disco are being regulated and determined by Nepra, an autonomous body to regulate the power sector.
The proposed increase is a minor effort to recover the legitimate cost of service to make the power sector financially viable. The current tariff is not based on overall balance sheet of all Discos. Nepra is determining tariff based on the cost of distribution of respective Disco, he added.
He said it is imperative to note that agriculture consumers are enjoying various subsidies and paying bills significantly lower than the real cost of service. The power sector is nourishing agriculture sector through its highly subsidised tariff. Evidently, the current tariff has taken care of agriculture consumer through in-built cross subsidies.
Keeping in view the sensitivity of the sector, the Government is also providing various subsidies to agricultural consumers. The average cost of service is Rs 9.2 whereas the average tariff for agriculture consumer is just Rs 4.47. This means that agriculture customers are paying substantially less than their cost of service, whereas as industrial and commercial customers paying significantly more. The agriculture customer is enjoying PKR 42 billion, as gross subsidy in the current financial year, he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2009

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