Senate’s Standing Committee on Water Resources has directed the Ministry of Water to formulate a comprehensive plan featuring long- and short-term measures to deal with the issue of sedimentation in the Tarbela dam. The Committee met under the chairmanship of Syed Muhammad Sabir Shah when the issue of plot allocation for the affectees of Tarbela Dam was also discussed.

The Committee decided that urgent measures must be taken to address the issue of sedimentation in the largest mud-dam of the country. Sabir Shah said that if dams are operating at their full capacity, we will be able to sustain our energy sources in the long-run. He said, “we need to move closer towards nature and the adoption of alternative energy solutions crucial for the survival and growth of the country’s economy.”

The Committee directed the Ministry of Waters to prepare a briefing on the Diamer-Bhasha Dam to be presented in the next meeting of the Committee.The Committee was informed that 1,744 affectees have been compensated under the plot-allocation scheme.

The meeting was told that some 450 affectees filed writ petitions before the Peshawar High Court Abbottabad Bench for the allotment of alternate agricultural land and asked for an increase in compensation against WAPDA, Federal Government, Governments of Punjab and Sindh. 

It was shared that based on the information provided by 450 affectees, only one has been found eligible with respect to allotment of alternate agricultural land as per eligibility criteria of the Federal Government policy of 1967-68. The Committee stressed that the matters should be solved outside the court through arbitration processes as much as possible.

Discussing unauthorized occupancy of allotted land to the affectees in Punjab and Sindh, WAPDA was of the view that no such information regarding the issue was available with them as it came under the domain of the provincial governments.   The meeting was also attended by the Senators Sana Jamali, Taj Haider, Gurdeep Singh, Dr Muhammad Humayun Mohmand, and other senior officials from the Ministry of Water Resources and WAPDA.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk