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Irrigation,

drainage system

in dire straits: experts

ARSHAD AWAN

KARACHI: Despite substantial budgetary input, the irrigation and drainage system in Pakistan is in dire straits, according to experts.

"The system suffers from severe and worsening operational problems, including waterlogging and salinity, overexploitation of fresh groundwater, low efficiency in delivery and use, inequitable distribution, unreliable delivery and insufficient cost recovery," said Mahmood Khan, agro-economist.

Khan said these problems had many sources because the government treated water as public goods, not private tradable goods, for which the market could operate.

"Lack of well defined property rights and the illegality of sales of surface water severely constrain informal irrigation water markets," Khan said.

He said the government had failed to make budgetary provision for operation of the system and maintained separate public bodies for irrigation maintenance and revenue collection.

Similarly, Minister for Food and Agriculture Dr. Shafqat Ali Shah Jamote while speaking at Karachi on Thursday was of the view that the distribution of water needed a comprehensive plans because either we had over-irrigation or under-irrigation in some parts of the country.

Ali Abbas, an independent irrigation consultant, said unlike on-farm drainage, off-farm drainage was a public goods, since it was generally not possible to exclude individuals from the areawide drainage benefit of lowering the water table.

"Off-farm drainage will have to continue to be supplied by the government. The underlying problem of an inappropriate institutional framework will nevertheless reforms that will ensure autonomy, transparency and accountability," Abbas said.

Both the experts suggested that sustained improvement in performance was only possible with market-determined incentives from irrigation and on-farm drainage.

"A first step is to draw up enforceable property rights to water, without which any attempt to legalise and commercialise water markets would be futile," Mahmood Khan said.

Ali Abbas argued that establishing individual property rights would not be enough and that the move toward commercial water markets would require major institutional changes in the delivery of irrigation and drainage.

"The best option for the government is to develop user-directed, autonomous, commercially-oriented public utilities to ensure operational transparency and cost recovery of all operation and maintenance and future investment expenditures," Abbas said.

As the major users of water, farmers organisations would also be vital to any market-based irrigation system.

Both the experts were of the view that farmers groups could be organised to carry out some maintenance, ensure that water was distributed in accordance with property rights, monitor ground-water use, organise on-farm drainage development and collect delivery and drainage charges.