Home »Agriculture and Allied » Pakistan » IRSA restarts filling Tarbela, Mangla dams

  • News Desk
  • Jul 21st, 2018
  • Comments Off on IRSA restarts filling Tarbela, Mangla dams
The Indus River System has restarted filling the country's only two dams Tarbela on the river Indus and Mangla on the river Jhelum as water inflows in the four live rivers Indus, Chenab, Jhelum and Kabul have reached 4,00,000 cusecs.

Punjab irrigation engineers told Business Recorder that the country was facing up to 50 percent shortage of water for sowing and growing Kharif crops including rice, cotton, sugarcane, maize, fodder for livestock and vegetables in the months of April, May and June. Therefore the water regulatory body gave preference to the sowing of cash crops instead of retaining any quantity of water in the reservoirs.

They said that after recent monsoon rains in the upper catchments areas of the rivers, more than 2,00,000 cusecs water is running in the river Indus at Tarbela , 88,000 cusecs water in the river Chenab 65,500 cusecs in the river Kabul at Nowshera and 32,825 cusecs water in the river Jhelum at Mangla.

They said IRSA is far behind its annual schedule of filling the dams in the third week of July and it might not be possible to store about 1`3.5 MAF water in the dams for the sowing of winter crops including staple food wheat crop this year.

They said that presently IRSA is meeting all the irrigation water demands of the four provinces that are running their wide canal network to its full capacity and now there is zero percent shortage of water for Kharif crops in the country.

Punjab Irrigation department is making full use of precious running water in the river Chenab and diverting 42,000 cusecs water through mega Marala Ravi Link canal and Qadirabad Balloki link canal towards command areas of river Ravi and the river Sutlej that have been given to India under the Indus Basin Treaty.

Meanwhile Meteorological department has said that Monsoon activity is likely to increase from 22nd July-2018 which may cause isolated heavy fall with one or two very heavy falls over the upper catchments of rivers Chenab, Ravi & Sutlej along with Lahore, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Faisalabad & Rawalpindi Divisions. Scattered thunderstorm/rain with moderate to heavy falls is also expected over the upper catchments of river Jhelum along with Sahiwal and DG Khan Divisions.

Flood Warning Centre said that Rain-thundershower is expected at isolated places in Malakand, Hazara, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Zhob, and Kalat divisions, Islamabad, FATA, Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan today. River Kabul at Nowshera is in Low Flood level. All the other major Rivers are flowing is the state of their normal flows. Flows in the Nullahs of Rivers Ravi and Chenab are likely to increase from 23rd July-2018.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018


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