While presenting a critical picture of water storage in the days to come, Indus River System Authority's (IRSA) Advisory Committee on Monday projected 38 percent water shortage during Rabi season 2018-19, commencing from 1 Oct, which will hit the agriculture sector, especially Sindh and Punjab.
This was the crux of meeting presided over by Irsa chairman Sher Zaman Khan. Besides, IRSA officials, Pakistan Met Department director general, Punjab Irrigation Secretary, Sindh Irrigation Secretary, and representatives of Balochistan, KP and Wapda also attended the meeting.
In Kharif, Punjab faced 20 percent shortage, Sindh 17 percent, Balochistan 44 percent and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 33 percent. The total water shortage for Kharif crops was 21 percent.
According to IRSA spokesperson Rana Khalid Idrees, total available water of 24.88 MAF for Rabi 2018-19 includes 18.99 MAF from river inflows and 5.89 MAF from storage with system losses calculated at 1.73 MAF; and 0.04 MAF will be released below Kotri. This makes the total water availability of 23.11 MAF.
After reduction of 1.77 MAF of system losses and below Kotri, the Advisory Committee calculated Punjab's share at 12.18 MAF, followed by Sindh at 9.21 MAF, KP at 0.70 MAF and Balochistan at 1.02 MAF.
IRSA spokesperson further stated that Advisory Committee has urged the provinces to use better management techniques to utilize the available resources, besides vigilant monitoring.
The representatives of Met Office informed the Advisory Committee that rainfall in winter will be below normal and there was no chance of rains in October and November 2018. However, rains are expected in late December 2018 and January 2019 but only in the hilly areas.
Sindh government which has already raised the issue of water scarcity due to which some of the districts have been declared drought hit areas, will raise objections on the opening of Chashma Jehlum (CJ) and Trimmu Panjnad (TP) link canals like in the past. Sindh claims that it has incurred 31 per cent in agricultural loss due to water scarcity in the province.
IRSA has already advised the government to start working on building at least two storage reservoirs to address the increasing future challenges.
According to analysts, climate change conditions are getting serious each year, making it difficult for the authorities to firm up the water availability anticipations correctly. The continuous water shortages had a long term negative impact in terms of increasing stress on water table because of the greater reliance on groundwater extraction.
In the past, Sindh was advised to talk to Punjab at the highest level and agree to use its water share at the present moment and adjust it later but this agreement has not yet been reached. Recently, Member IRSA (Sindh) said that he raised the issue facing by Sindh but his lone voice went unheard at IRSA meetings.
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