HYDERABAD-Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (SIDA) Chairman Qabool Muhammad Khatian on Friday said that he will take up the case with the Sindh government to sanction water for 180,000 acres of land which has been transferred from the command area of Rohri Canal to Nara Canal.
Khatian held a meeting with the officers of Nara Canal Area Water Board (NCAWB) and the farmers of that region in Mirpurkhas district, according to SIDA’s spokesperson Hizbullah Mangrio.
The chairman said all the watercourses in the command area of Nara would be repaired and assured that water would be supplied till the tail end. He added that measures would be taken to take action against the water theft and gave one week to the officials of the NCAWB to repair all the damaged watercourses.
He warned that if he received a complaint of water theft, he would take action against the concerned official.
The chairman SIDA also noted complaints from the local farmers about seepage in the five fall structures which were built to regulate the flows of Nara in 2014 and 2016. He assured that a team of experts would conduct a technical study of the structures and if those complaints came out to be true the necessary measures would be taken to control seepage. Khatian informed that the Sindh government was working on a project to consolidate the levees of the water distributaries through CC lining.
According to him, SIDA would point out the distributaries where the lining work had not been done so far to the Sindh government so that the reinforcement works could be initiated at the earliest. He asked the farmers to increase the collection of water bills and also to write letters to the government to undertake lining of the distributaries in their areas. The chairman also asked the officers to prepare the PC-I so that the height of the embankments of Nara could be increased by 3 to 4 feet like Phuleli Canal, underscoring that the project would increase the canal’s water-taking capacity.