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Growers’ body urges Punjab to share water shortage

LARKANA: A leader of the Sindh Abadgar Board expressed the fear on Saturday that acute shortage of water in canals irrigating what is referred to as rice belt for producing large quantities of the grain would drastically cut rice production, and urged the Punjab to share the water shortage.
'It’s an extraordinary situation, which demands extraordinary measures within a week’s time or things will go from bad to worse,' said Gada Hussain Mahesar, vice-president of the Sindh Abadgar Board. Right from Kashmore to the tail-end of Dadu district, the Rice Canal, Dadu Canal, Warah Barrage, North Western Canal, Safiullah Magsi branch and hundreds of their channels and tributaries, which irrigated around 2.2 million acres of land, faced shortage of water, he said.
He said the growers who had already received water a month late in June instead of May and survived the jolt they had received from damage to paddy crop during heavy rains were once again faced with acute shortage of water during peak season of paddy cultivation.
It was quite discouraging that a month had already passed but the growers could hardly have transplanted 1 per cent of the 2.2 million acres of land, he said. The framers and growers could hardly prepare 55 per cent of paddy nurseries with major water intake from the tube-wells but they did not have enough water to keep them alive, he claimed. The seedlings were drying up for want of water, he said.He said that the Sindh government had backed out of its promise to provide paddy seeds to the growers, forcing the growers to purchase the seeds from open market at the rate of Rs1,300 to 1,500 per 40 kilogram.
Mr Mahesar advocated proportional distribution of water among all provinces and urged the provinces to share both the shortage and the increase in water.He said that Sindh was suffering while Punjab was bent upon releasing water into Chashma and Tauna link canals in violation of the rules and president’s directives. Sindh’s irrigation officials had shut their eyes over opening of Chashma and Tauna Link canals, he said.
The irrigation system of Sindh had collapsed, said Mr Mahesar and warned that if the situation did not improve within a week it would leave about 1100,000 acres of land in Sindh without paddy cultivation.
About water dispute between Sindh and Balochistan at Grang Regulator on Sindh-Balochistan border, he said that Balochistan was not ready to share the shortage.Belated transplantation of paddy would surely invite pest attacks and other diseases, which would in turn affect the overall production, he said.
He said that a urea bag of 40 kilogram was being sold at Rs850 against the government rate of Rs710. At least 4.4 million bags of urea were required for paddy, he said and regretted that the government had backed out of commitment to provide 150,000 bags of imported fertiliser.
The imported fertiliser would have provided great relief to the growers, he said.When framers, growers and peasants were worried over water and availability of agricultural inputs, the revenue officials were out to collect taxes that the Sindh government had already waived off in the wake of colossal losses to paddy crop after heavy rains, he said.
Meanwhile, executive engineers of Rice Canal, North Western Canal, Dadu Canal and Saifullah Magsi Canal have issued a water rotation plan.