They pointed out that the irrigation system of the province consists of three barrages, 14 canal systems and thousands of water courses. The water canals and courses were virtually run down with the passage of time and it is only now that the government launch a gigantic project for the improvement of canals and watercourses, while till date no strategy was evolved to ensure transparent distribution of water.
They said that theft of canal water is possible only by collusion of errant farmers with corrupt low-level canal officials.
These officials are in return rewarded financially and are also protected from law by these powerful farmers more often seen moving in power corridors. Theft of canal water is in fact theft from the share of water of neighbouring farmers.
The system of water management in vogue, which depends entirely on the honesty, integrity and hard work of beldars, tandels and other low-level officials, has many loopholes and cannot be relied upon any more. In the prevailing socio-economic conditions it should hardly be expected from a low-paid beldars and other low-level canal officials that they remain honest and hard working, while others around them enjoy all sorts of illegal benefits.
The role of errant farmers in water theft needs not to be ignored.
Water heights recording gauges were installed as a state-of-the-art system in late 19th century when the British rulers originally introduced the canals in Indo-Pakistan. These rulers had no moral obligation to introduce such an advance system at that time.
However, they did it. During the last 150 years, tremendous development has taken place in the field of water stage recording, discharge measurements and also in transmission of data from remote locations. Unfortunately, in Sindh the original method of recording of data and transmitting is still being used. This method has become obsolete and probably in use only in this part of the world. The system of water management, based on gauge heights data, has lost its credibility altogether.
Therefore, farmers at head of channels took more water than their due share, whereas, at tail of the channels, farmers suffer owing to shortage of water. This situation has economically devastated the tail end farmers, which has led to their migration for seeking alternate livelihood in urban areas of Sindh.
UNJUST DISTRIBUTION: This condition has been created due to inequitable and unjust distribution of water in irrigation network of Sindh. The question is, should this state of affairs be allowed to be continued much longer.
They maintained that in Pakistan water of the Indus River system for irrigation is conserved in reservoirs and is then distributed among the provinces in low flow season.
Unfortunately, Sindh's share of irrigation water is insufficient to support irrigation network even in normal years. In semi or drought years, water availability in the province becomes critical and remains below its requirements. During the current year, the situation is becoming critical, as Sindh's share of water in Rabi season has been reduced by 37 percent.
This requires that the irrigation water should be used economically and distributed judiciously and equitably among all farmers, especially to the farmers at the tail end of the system.
They said for canal operation two types of measurements are mainly required namely: canal discharges and water levels at various locations along the canal. For water level observation, staff gauges have been fixed at various locations along the canals.
These staff gauges are required to be observed twice or thrice daily but it has been observed that the discharge measurement of canals is however, seldom done.
Water-level observation is done by beldars and tandels (gate operators) and the data so collected is transmitted to the higher offices by canal wires along the canal.
Since fudging and wrong reporting of data is a common phenomenon all over the world, especially in far off and hazardous places, it should hardly be expected that the gauge heights data of the canal also collected throughout the year and reported by beldars in Sindh, who can be influenced by khatedars and landlords, would always be correct.
Moreover, since a beldar is required to carryout several more functions daily, like maintenance of service roads, banks and canal section etc he may become too tired to walk or ride cycle to a far off water level gauge twice a day to record water level readings, especially when there is no supervisor on him available at all the time, therefore he may be inclined at times to report fictitious data.
This situation has economically devastated the tail end farmers, which has led to their migration for seeking alternate livelihood in urban areas of Sindh. The question is, should this state of affairs be allowed to be continued much longer.
Pakistan is far behind the West in adoption of new technologies in nearly every field although, it has the technical knowledge and capability to upgrade its technologies, including water technologies.
They were of the opinion that the solution of water management problems lies in the adoption of such technologies in which the roles of low-level canal officials are completely eliminated.
The state-of-the-art water data acquisition and reporting technologies are known as SCADA/Telemetry System. This system is simple, suitable, fool proof and completely automatic and being used extensively all over the world to collect data of canals, tube wells, pipelines, plant etc.
It is ideally suitable for monitoring and collection and transmission of data from a remote or hazardous location. The new technologies can revolutionise the irrigation management in Sindh.