LAHORE: As the national water supplies dropped by more than 50 per cent last week, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) on Monday rang alarm bells: shortage will plummet to 30 to 35pc if the situation persists for over a week.
According to Irsa’s data, the national river flows on Monday dropped to 223,000 cusecs from 456,000 cusecs on June 13 – a drop of over 50pc. The biggest plunge was recorded in River Indus, from 225,000 cusecs to 97,800 cusecs.
“Irsa has started drawing additional water from both Tarbela and Mangla dams, compromising their filling prospects, but has not started passing on the shortage to the provinces,” said Irsa spokesman Khalid Idrees Rana. But it can only hold this additional supply for the next 10 days. If the situation does not improve by then, the entire country would feel the pinch.
Against these inflows, Irsa is supplying 273,100 cusecs nationally (107,000 cusecs to Punjab, 149,000 to Sindh, 14,000 to Balochistan and 3,100 to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) without slashing the provincial share. For this purpose, it is maintaining 155,000 cusecs release from Tarbela and has increased Mangla release from 25,000 cusecs to 55,000 cusecs.
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