'Pakistan can store 10 percent of its annual river flows'

WAPDA advisor on Diamer Basha Dam Project Dr Izhar-ul-Haq has said that Pakistan can store 10 percent of its annual river flows while average water storage capacity the world over stands at 40 percent. He was briefing a delegation of the participants of National Security Workshop, National Defence University (NDU) Islamabad at the WAPDA House on Monday.
The delegation was headed by NDU Director General Major General Ghulam Qamar, the delegation comprised of the Senators, Members of the National and Provincial Assemblies, senior civil and military officers and notables from civil society. WAPDA advisor said that the per capita water availability in the country has gone down to 942 cubic meter per annum due to rapid increase in population. The countries having less than 1000 cubic meter per capita water availability are counted in water-stressed countries.
To cope with the situation, WAPDA is working on a number of storage projects. Of them, Diamer Basha Dam, Kurram Tangi Dam and Mohmand Dam are ready for construction, which would cumulatively store 10.6 million acre feet (MAF) of water besides generating 5383 megawatt (MW) of low cost hydel electricity.
Briefing about the hydropower projects, the delegation was informed that at present, WAPDA is constructing six hydropower projects with cumulative generation capacity of 4792 MW. Out of them, three projects including Tarbela 4th Extension, Neelum Jhelum and Golen Gol with cumulative generation capacity of 2485 MW are scheduled to be completed by the year 2018. The delegation was also informed about water challenges of Pakistan and water issues with India and Afghanistan.
In another briefing, PEPCO General Manager (Revenue and Commercial Operation) Muhammad Saleem briefed the delegation about power sector reforms, electricity crisis and issues relating to power sector. The delegation was also apprised of the government's efforts to overcome the electricity shortages in the country. The other measures include improvement in transmission and distribution systems, automatic metering infrastructure, net metering and better customer services etc.
Following the briefings, a question-answer session was also held, wherein the queries about water and power sectors raised by the participants were responded to. Later, WAPDA Member (Power) and NDU delegation head exchanged the souvenirs as memento to the visit.