Govt set to take provinces on board over water policy

Draft would be tabled before upcoming CCI meeting to seek consent

ISLAMABAD: With drastic cut in fund allocation in its tenure, the PML-N government is now set to take provinces on board to price water for the production sectors of the economy and form a new water body - the National Water Council (NWC) - to oversee major projects in the country.

At present, agriculture and power sectors, which use water for production, may be priced, if the proposed policy is approved by the Council of Common Interests (CCI).



The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has also been insisting the government to price the water stored in dams.

The draft of the new water policy would be tabled before the upcoming CCI to seek the consent of provinces for approval.

The federal government said that water at the delivery point shall be realistically priced according to a general principle for production sectors of the economy, which would affect full recovery cost.

Secondly, for social usage, the concept of affordability would be applied, and for environmental and ecological needs, water supply shall be free of cost.

Whenever the subsidy becomes unavoidable, it should be carefully estimated and the source of its financing should be clearly indicated, provided that the source has adequate resources for subsidy financing.

According to the draft, a major reason of the water crisis is the lack of allocation of funds in the public sector development programme. As a result, there has been no increase in total cropped area in the past two decades.

During the Musharraf regime, funds allocated for the power sector stood at Rs70 billion, which went down to Rs51 billion during the PPP regime in 2012-13.

During the present regime of PML-N, it further dropped to Rs36.7 billion in 2017-18, which amounts to 3.7% of the total federal sector development programme. It was the lowest allocation of funds for the water sector, compared to the last two decades.

The new water policy recommends increasing funds allocation at 10% of the total federal development programme in 2018-19 and 20% by 2030.



The National Water Council (NWC) has been proposed for planning, regulation, development coordination and management.

This council will review and coordinate implementation of the national water policy and national water sector strategy in the country.

A new ground water authority will be established in each province to ensure sustainability and transparency.

A information technology-based monitoring system has been proposed at all diversion points from the rivers and reservoirs, which will be refined and upgraded to guarantee availability of real time data.

It would also help cover those parts of catchments of the rivers that lie in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and outside Pakistan to include tributary rivers.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2018.

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