ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has asked the Ministry of Water and Power to identify gaps in the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) 1960 wherein India while being remaining well within the Treaty can exploit Pakistan and asked the authorities concerned to come up with the working paper in the next meeting on the task assigned to them.
“The prime minister also asked the relevant authorities to come up with the strategy making India unable to exploit Pakistan because of the gaps in some provisions of the Treaty,” Marriyum Aurangzeb, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting, said while chairing the first session of national consultation on Pakistan’s water challenges here.
The minister said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, India will not be allowed to bulldoze Pakistan’s water interests. She said India under the leadership of Narendra Modi wants to use water as weapon against Pakistan and he will not be allowed to succeed in his designs. She said the Foreign Office and World Bank are in contact with Indian authorities to arrange secretary-level talks to advance as per IWT on the issue of dams.
The World Bank has already stepped up its efforts manifold to soon arrange the meeting between Pakistan and India at secretary level for developing consensus in the light of IWT on the mechanism for resolution of ‘faulty designs’ of 300MW Kishenganga and 850MW Ratle hydropower projects.
The World Bank wants both the countries to develop consensus either on mechanism of neutral expert or of court of arbitration mentioned in the Treaty for the resolution of issues pertaining to the said projects. And in case of failure, both the countries need to develop agreement on the middle way to resolve the issues.
During the consultation, Joint Secretary Water Syed Mehr Ali Shah highlighted some facts saying that under the inter-provincial water apportionment accord 1991, Pakistan’ system has 137 million acre feet of water. “However, we have 104 million acres of water in our system which is 74 percent of 137maf water mentioned in the agreement,” Mehr Al Shah said.
“We have stored 14maf water in our dams, barrages and rest of the water is in our huge system based on river courses and canals,” he said. He said 50maf ground water is extracted per annum and the same quantity of water is getting recharged and it is the surface water which keeps on recharging the ground water table, but the challenge is how to save the water which gets mixed after seepage in the brackish water zone as the water quantity that is mixed in the brackish water zone is actually the loss which cannot be retrieved and to this effect 30-40 percent water is being lost.
He advocated for the regulation of the ground water for which a framework is direly needed. He also mentioned that in the Indian bordering cities like Rajasthan, East Punjab and Haryana, excessive water is pumped out and since Pakistan’s province Punjab and Indian Punjab share the common water aquifer and because of excessive extraction of water from Indian side, the water table in our side of the Punjab is being adversely affected.
However, in a latest development, India has worked out a project of ground water management with the assistance of World Bank and if it is executed well, it will be beneficial for Pakistan. The representative of Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) said only 30 percent people of Pakistan have access to quality drinking water.
