MULTAN (February 24 2009): The Anjuman Kashtkaran Punjab (AKP), Pakistan Kissan Board (PKB), and other farmer associations have expressed fear that farmers of Punjab and Sindh would have to bear the brunt of the Indian plan of construction of three dams on the Indus, as then that country would be in a destructive position to control the water flows into Pakistan for late rabi and early kharif crops, hence destroying agriculture in the provinces.
Khurshid Kanju, president of PKB, Abdul Ali Zakir Usmani, president of AKP, and Khurshid-ul-Haq of Farmers Association, on Monday demanded of the government to discus the consequences of the Indian decision to build three dams on the Indus, the lifeline for Pakistan, in total contravention of the Indus Basin Treaty.
They said that farmers of the country felt strongly about India's plan to build three dams on the Indus at a time when water is getting scarce every year and irrigation had become a serious challenge. "The Indus is our lifeline, and should be our top priority. We cannot trust India when it comes to water issues, and one thing should be very clear that India has always violated the treaty and tried to pressurise Pakistan through various tactics. The most recent example is blockage of the Chenab flows when they were crucial for our rice crop. It has caused irreparable damage and the farmers of Pakistan suffered immensely," they said.
They said that the new planned Indian dams could play havoc with Pakistan if its reservoirs collapsed, for any reason, releasing huge quantity of water and causing flashfloods that would devastate large areas of land in Pakistan.
"It will enable India to undertake construction of the river diversion works, even on the Chenab, and other irrigation works with storage from the Jhelum and the Indus," they remarked.
They further said that when completed, the projects would enable India to control, or throttle, the rivers' flows in its favour, making Pakistan bow to their hegemony. They said the Indian control on river waters would eventually make barren Pakistan's main productive provinces of Sindh and Punjab. They hoped that the government would not ignore this important matter, like Baglihar and other water treaty-related matters, when India always won its point and Pakistan had been denied its rightful share of water as embodied in the treaty.
They Said: "Had Pakistan constructed Kalabagh Dam, it would have been very easy to prevent India from using Pakistan's water, as we would have argued that it fell under committed water usage. But when about 35 to 40 million acre-feet (MAF) water was going into sea every year, it was not possible to claim that India was violating the rights of the lower riparian state."
They appreciated the government plan to send a team of water experts, headed by the "one and only" Commissioner of Indus Water, Jamaat Ali Shah since time immemorial, and stressed upon the government to include specific stakeholders from Sindh and Punjab in the team as well, who are the main victims of the new Indian conspiracy.
