To create awareness among masses, a documentary be prepared explaining the pros and cons of building the Kalabagh Dam
ISLAMABAD: How many people of this country know that the water stored in dams and barrages comes from the melting of glaciers in the northern regions of Pakistan and India? How many know that the US has dams with the capacity to store water for up to 900 days, India for 200 days and Pakistan has a grand total capacity to store water for only 30 days? How many know that storage capacity of the Mangla and Tarbela dams and the Chashma Barrage is being reduced due to silt? How many know that India, as per the Indus Water Treaty, has the legal right to use the waters being wasted by Pakistan due to lack of storage facilities/dams in Pakistan? How many know that most agricultural land on the east bank of the Indus River in Sindh is left dry due to very few irrigation canals? How many know that that more 30 million acre feet of water flows into the sea without being of any use to anyone? Because of lack of storage capacity there is poor flood control, resulting in loss of lives, damage to houses, agricultural crops, livestock, roads and bridges.
To educate the public and to spread awareness, it is suggested that a documentary be prepared explaining the pros and cons of building the Kalabagh Dam. The members of the committee overseeing the making of the documentary should include one person each from each party that has at least five members in the National Assembly or provincial assemblies. Other members could be from Wapda, the Ministry of Finance, the Indus River System Authority and one dam expert from the United Nations as a neutral observer. The head of the committee should be a serving or retired senior military official with a mandate to have the documentary finished within a time frame of six months. To get as many people on board, it should be declared that areas such as Dera Ismail Khan, the Cholistan desert, parts of Balochistan near the Indus River and the east bank of the River Indus in Sindh will get priority for the construction of irrigation canals in these areas, concurrently with the building of the Kalabagh Dam. The finished documentary would then be shown on all television channels across the country to allow people to judge for themselves if the Kalabagh Dam is worth constructing. After a reasonable time, a referendum should be held in which people can vote for or against the dam. If the majority votes yes, in a few years, they should see the benefits of building it. If the majority votes no, then they will only have themselves to blame when there is shortage of food, power outages and large-scale flooding.
Syed Hussein El-Edroos
Published in The Express Tribune, July 27th, 2015.
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