Farmers to be educated about field watering planning
LAHORE- Punjab irrigation department has advised its filed
chief engineers to educate the farmers about their field
watering planning.
They have also been advised to prepare internal `warabandi'
programmes of the distributary channels in consultation with
water allocation committees, official sources said here on
Thursday. Representatives of District Nazims, officials of the
Agricultural and Irrigation Department and farmers are
included in the committees.
The step has been taken to minimize the adverse impact of
canal water shortage for Rabi Crops. They said that at the
start of Rabi season of 2001-2, IRSA had forecast the
anticipated average availability for canals of the provinces
at 18.73 MAF as against requirements of 36 MAF with a
shortfall of 51%.
The rain fall and snow fall this winter had been negligible
and IRSA reviewed the situation on February 06, 2002. The
province had utilized 14.6 MAF uptil January 31. The water
availability for the remaining Rabi season was around 1.73 MAF.
The reservoir level at Tarbela on 13th February, had dropped
down to RL 1388 against its dead storage level of RL 1369 and
storage of only 0.29 MAF was available against its full
capacity storage of 7.2 MAF. Mangla reservoir level this month
had dropped down to RL 1106 against the dead storage level of
RL 1040.
14 February 2002
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Pakissan.com;
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