With a significant surge in water flows across all major rivers, the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) has begun releasing full irrigation supplies to all four provinces, eliminating water shortages. The accumulative water deficit will now plummet below 20% from April 1 to June 30 this year. The Irsa Advisory Committee (IAC), scheduled to meet on Monday, will review the water situation and  finalisation of anticipated water availability criteria for the balance period.

Chief Engineer Adviser to the Ministry of Water Resources, Member Water and Member Power Wapda, secretaries of Irrigation and Agriculture departments of the four provincial governments will attend the meeting. “The water inflows have improved mainly because of a rise in temperature to 26.7 degrees in Skardu which is why we have started storing water in dams and so far 2.111 million acre-feet (MAF) of water has been stored.

Sometime in May and June, there may be a dip in water inflows so the stored water will be used to irrigate the Kharif crops,” Khalid Idrees Rana, Irsa spokesman told The News. “Since the water flows have increased to a reasonable level, Irsa started providing the indented supplies to all provinces from May 3. Right now, the demand of 84,100 cusecs per day from Punjab, 60,000 cusecs from Sindh, 2,000 cusecs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and 1,000 cusecs from Balochistan is being fulfilled,” he said.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)