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Drought-like condition grips the country

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Web Desk
Web Desk
News Stories Posted by ARY News Digital Team

ISLAMABAD: Following the improved river flows from Kabul River the chances of possible drought that could’ve gripped the nation have diminished, still it had already hit most parts of the country, affecting the production of Kharif crops.

On Friday the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) said that since May 26 the river flows had more than tripled to 342,400 cusecs. Prior to this, they stood at 108,000 cusecs.

The river Kabul is now in “high flood” at Nowshera. Due to this development Punjab and Sindh water shares had been increased significantly and similarly, the storage has been improved to one million acre feet (MAF).

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) on the other hand, said the country may have already suffered the loss and called for “An immediate water management strategy (by all the stakeholders) to avoid negative impacts of deficit rainfall on water and agriculture”.

PMD said that “Due to deficient rainfall, drought-like conditions have emerged over the most parts of Pakistan”, the moderate-to-severe drought was prevailing in barani areas of Punjab, lower KP, South Punjab, southwest Balochistan and southeast Sindh.

The southern parts of the country have also observed dry conditions during the past five months.

“This dry condition caused water stress in the agriculture areas of the country that demands availability of more supplementary irrigation water for Kharif crops”, the PMD said.

The PMD stated that the availability of water in the major reservoirs was low but also shared the hope that the betterment of the weather conditions would improve this situation.

Small dams situated near Islamabad were at a critical level and groundwater boring and well become dry up to the depth of 150 feet in most areas of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The PMD said winter months of January – March received negative 62percent well below normal rainfall whereas April – May witnessed negative 9.9pc while average January to May noted 45pc normal rainfall over Pakistan.

The Irsa mentioned that due to the weather rising in Skardu the process of snow melting is graduating at a slight phase nevertheless the recorded temperature at 30 degrees Celsius was sufficient enough to do the needful. This will increase the river inflows from 342,400 cusecs on Friday to 356,300 cusecs or 13,900 cusecs higher than Thursday and 108,000 cusecs on May 26.

The outflows were increased from 277,700 cusecs or 31,100 cusecs higher than a day before.

River Kabul was in high flood on Friday with its flows recorded at 91,000 cusecs at Nowshera. The storage in dams has increased from 0.850 MAF to 1.036 MAF.

This progress enabled Irsa to increase provincial shares as Punjab’s share was increased from 100,200 cusecs to 107,000 cusecs while Sindh’s share was increased to 110,000 cusecs from 90,000 cusecs. Balochistan and Sindh were already getting a full share of 14,000 cusecs and 3100 cusecs respectively.

Kharif cropping season which sees the production of crops such as rice, sugarcane, cotton, maize, and mash starts from April-June and lasts until October-December in different parts of the country.

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