KARACHI: Former chairman of the standing committee on agriculture of the FPCCI and Secretary-General (Federal) of the Businessmen Panel (BMP) Chaudhry Ahmad Jawad has underscored the need for a water policy with the coordination of the provincial governments, which was drafted many a times in the past but not approved as yet.
He also stressed on the control of evaporation losses from reservoirs and creation of reliable data on water resources and its usage.
The discharge of industrial and domestic wastewater into open water bodies and groundwater is the main threat to the country’s water reserves, which deteriorate the quality of water and is the major cause of diseases, he added.
He also urged the government to start constructing dams, including the Kalabagh Dam, and on Jhelum and Sutlej rivers too, on a priority basis.
Jawad said that the threat of choking off of water to Pakistan is not vacuous. It needlessly pits India against the people of Pakistan by playing on an insecurity that has a deeper psychological effect than the threat of a war. He said the Indus Waters Treaty is an international agreement, and India cannot revoke it.
“But I think the Indian government is determined to set aside the formal contract,” and it wanted to take control of Jhelum River to make a negative impact on Pakistan’s agriculture sector, which would not be acceptable at all. As India had already taken control of releasing water into the Jhelum River which could trigger flood or drought on the Pakistani side, he added.
He urged the government to approach the World Bank and the international court of arbitration against Indian desires.
He also called for some conservation and management strategy before water scarcity became a national security threat.
Jawad said industrialized nations of Europe had water storage capacity of 90 days, but Pakistan had a storage capacity for around 30 days only, which must be increased to 1,000 days.
“We have the world’s best canal system, but up to 50 percent of water gets wasted, which is not acceptable.”
Moreover, around 145 million acres feet of water flowed through the country. Of this, a major portion was wasted, he said.
He said that the water availability per capita, which was 5,600 cubic meters in 1947, had been reduced to 1,000 cubic meters.
The BMP secretary-general said that the gap between demand and supply would reach one billion cubic meters in a decade. Therefore, water should be declared a matter of national security to save the country from becoming a desert.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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