Mangla dam will be available for additional water storage during forthcoming monsoon season as the technical team has cleared it for enhanced storage. The dam will now store 8.88 million acre feet (MAF) water against 5.88 MAF of the last season.
Sources told Business Recorder that after necessary tests, the engineering department has cleared Mangla dam for additional water storage to help Pakistan have more water to meet irrigation and power generation needs.
Tarbela and Mangla dams are lifelines for Pakistan for decades as they are the only source of water storage and hydel power generation. With the passage of time, their storage capacity shrunk drastically due to massive silting. Mangla dam could only store 5.88 MAF and keeping in view slow process of selection of the newly identified dams, the government had undertaken the project of its raising to increase the storage capacity.
Its feasibility and subsequent construction contracts were awarded to the contractors on an emergency basis. The technical people related to the project take pride in completing it in record time. They concede that the new reservoirs projects have not taken-off due to one reason or the other and their allocations in the development budget remained unutilised for the second consecutive fiscal year 2007-08.
The government had no option but to focus on Mangla dam as the last hope to get some additional water storage to meet the demand on short-term basis. Keeping in view the urgency of the project, the government allocated Rs 20 billion in the current Public Sector Development Programme.
But when requirement exceeded the budget, the project was provided additional Rs one billion in the third quarter of the current fiscal year. The project was provided Rs 21 billion in the current fiscal year against allocation of Rs 20 and timely release of funds did a great job in getting it complete ahead of schedule.
International donors have been cautioning Islamabad of water scarcity in the future and demanding building up new reservoirs. According to their studies, Pakistan needs at least four big reservoirs in next decade to avert water crisis.