Islamabad, April 3 (INP): Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been playing a key-role in developing agriculture sector in Pakistan by rehabilitating the Lower Chenab Canal (LCC) system since 2008. The work that cost around Rs. 2.5 billion is still in progress, said Rana Asif Mehmood Khan, Chief engineer irrigation department Faisalabad zone, while briefing a group of journalists who visited the JICA’s projects, undertaken in the Faisalabad division. The project aims to establish a model of appropriate irrigation management system. It helped a lot in developing a proper management and maintenance of the irrigation canals as well as increasing water use’s efficiency and on-farm productivity. The LCC is supplying irrigation water to 3.031 million acres of culture able command area through a network of branches, distributaries and minors. It has helped to reduce seepage losses in the saline area and to improve conveyance efficiency, reliability and durability of the system by minimizing system maintenance cost. The project ensured the provision of irrigation water to the beneficiaries in a more sustainable and equitable manner, said Rana Asif Mehmood Khan. The direct economic benefits achieved to the society in the form of increased agriculture production due to the investment in irrigation infrastructure and institutional reforms amounted to Rs 3004 million per annum on the entire project implementation. JICA project introduced adequate and reliable irrigation supplies to the culturable lands of area aiming at enhanced agricultural productivity, sustainable development with focus on holistic management and broad based reforms. It has emerged as a project which was indispensable to accelerate the agricultural development for improvement of livelihood of underprivileged and correction of economic discrepancy amongst the two areas. Under the project “Irrigation System Model” was established and promoted in many places such as Bahawalnagar Canal Circle, Lower Chenab Canal Circle, Derajat Canal Circle, and Dera Ghazi Khan zone. To implement the irrigation model, training materials and operational references were improved by introducing water saving irrigation technologies also disseminated by farmer-farmer relationship. The project has fulfilled the water needs of the farmers as they have not demonstrated against the government departments following the successful completion of JICA’s assistance since last many years. The farmers have requested JICA to extend their support for water conservation projects in irrigation sector as it may help in production of crops. INP/Z/AK