Darawat Dam to be completed by December

Dam is being constructed in Sindh at a cost of Rs9.4b.

MIRPUR: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has announced that the under-construction Darawat Dam, located in Thatta and Jamshoro districts of Sindh, will be completed by December this year while the project’s irrigation system will be ready by June next year.

Darawat Dam, being constructed across Nai Baran River some 70 km west of Hyderabad and costing around Rs9.4 billion, was part of Wapda’s plan to construct small and medium-sized dams in addition to mega water and hydropower projects, a Wapda spokesman said in a statement on Friday.

Wapda is pursuing the plan following directives from President Asif Ali Zardari to construct small and medium-sized dams in the four provinces and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) for socio-economic development in remote areas.

These projects are being taken up in areas which cannot be irrigated through the Indus Basin irrigation system in an attempt to ensure maximum utilisation of water and land resources.

The Darawat Dam project will help store water for agriculture, mitigate floods and provide employment opportunities.

The concrete-faced rock-filled dam will be 820 feet long and 141 feet high. It will store about 120,000 acre feet of water to irrigate 25,000 acres of land, besides creating 4,500 employment opportunities during construction, operation and maintenance.

Annual benefits of the project have been estimated at more than Rs1 billion. Life of the water reservoir will be more than 100 years.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2012.