The agriculture sector suffered a major blow as water shortage for sowing of the strategic Kharif crops including life-line of Pakistan's economy, cotton, rose to 38 percent. Consequently, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) further reduced irrigation water supply to Punjab and Sindh from Friday.
Punjab Irrigation department engineers told Business Recorder that the water regulatory body, after assessing the water availability in the four live rivers on Friday reduced water supply to Punjab from 80,000 cusecs to 67,000 cusecs and Sindh from 64,000 to 53,000 cusecs. However, Balochistan will continue to receive 7,000 cusecs and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 3,000 cusecs from the Indus Zone.
They said that since the water inflow in the rivers had been very low in the months of March and April due to cold and cloudy weather in the upper parts of the country that prevented snow melting, Irsa had estimated 21 percent water shortage in Punjab and Sindh from April 1, to June 10, 2012 for sowing the Kharif crops of cotton, rice, and sugarcane etc.
Meanwhile, Wapda report about rivers flows and reservoirs level said that water supply in the rivers continues to be the lowest since 2003. The water flow in river Indus at Tarbela dam is 55,700 cusecs, in river Jhelum at Mangla dam 43,4100 cusecs, in river Kabul at Nowshera 31,100 cusecs and in river Chenab at Marla 18,700 cusecs. The Irsa is releasing all the run of the river water for sowing the crops.
The inflow of river Indus at Jinnah barrage is 59,900, at Chashma 68,400 cusecs, at Taunsa 69,600, cusecs, at Guddu 45300 cusecs, at Sukkur 39,100 and at Kotri barrage 9670 cusecs. Punjab Canal Regulator Engineer M.H. Siddiqui told this scribe that the Irrigation department had supplemented water availability to the South Punjab by 15,000 cusecs from the regular share of the upper Punjab so that the cotton growers could sow their crops in time.
He said upper Punjab was facing about 40 percent water shortage while south Punjab was facing 15 percent shortage in the third week of May 2012. Agriculture experts and agronomists say that the ongoing sowing of Kharif crops in Punjab and Sindh has been severely hit by poor river water flows and the government might not achieve the targets of the Kharif crops.
President Pakistan Agri-forum Ibrahim Mughal said that Punjab government had set a target of 6.2 million acre for the cotton crop sowing to produce about 12 million cotton bales this season. However, he said, BT cotton has so far been sown over 2.2 million acres till May 15, 2012 in the province.
Meanwhile, the Meteorological department in its weather forecast for Saturday said that rain/dust-thunderstorm is expected at isolated places of Malakand, Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Rawalpindi, Sargodha divisions and Kashmir/G-Baltistan. It said mainly hot and dry weather is expected in most parts of the country during next two days. However, isolated thunderstorm rain may occur at few places of Malakand, Hazara, rawalpindi divisions and Kashmir/G-Baltistan It said rain/thunderstorm occurred at scattered places of KPK, and isolated in Punjab, Larkana, Sukkur, Zhob, Kalat and Makran divisions during last 24 hours.