RAJANPUR, Aug 25 (APP): The pathways of hill torrents originating from Suleman Mountain Range needed to be de-silted and widened to ensure they do not overflow and ravage rural and urban settlements, the way they did just recently in DG Khan and Rajanpur districts.
Four spells of monsoon rains over Suleman Mountain Range, began July end and continued into August, triggering history’s ferocious most hill torrents that swept through Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts inflicting deaths, destruction of crops and houses besides destroying the road network, prompting government to seek army helicopters to reach out to the affected communities with relief goods. A fifth spell of monsoon rains is ongoing.
The two districts lie between Suleman Mountain Range in the west and Indus river in the east.
The 2010 devastating floods originated from Indus river, however, in 2022, the districts were sandwitched between low-to-medium level flooding from Indus river and mighty flow of water from Suleman Mountains through hill torrents triggered by torrential rains which Irrigation Executive Engineer Zain Malik believed were 400 times mightier than usual.
The August 20 official report put the damage in DG Khan district at 342 Mauzas and villages, 80 union councils submerged, affecting directly 699,502 people, over 1.4 million acre crop area and damaged 58,593 houses. In Rajanpur, hill torrents affected nearly 100,000 people, submerged 309,000 acre agriculture area in 158 Mauzas besides damaging many houses, according to the August 22 official report.
Former director general of Intelligence Bureau (IB) Sardar Akhtar Hassan Gorchani, who also served in many important positions in police department, said he could see from his home in Lalgarh village, Tehsil Jampur, the speedy flow of hill torrents through his many squares of cropland.
Gorchani said that once 50-60 feet wide and enough deep hill torrents’ pathways had now turned into ordinary nullah due to continuous silting and encroachment. Narrating a pre-partition practice during British Raj to keep hill torrents in proper shape, he explained how bullocks attached with wooden ploughs would run through the hill torrent pathways, digging soil to keep them deep and wide enough to support water flow.
Hill torrents pathway in present shape could not support such a voluminous flow of water, Gorchani said and proposed employing excavators to remove silt, demarcate both its sides so that water could flow directly to the river without damaging the embankments, or overspilling. Some 500 hours of excavators’ work on each of over a dozen hill torrents would suffice to meet target in Rajanpur, he added.
He further recommended building small dams to store water from hill torrents, not only to control the water, but also to channelize the vital resource to support life, agriculture and produce cheaper hydel power, something this area needed badly.
He said that government could pursue a project titled ‘Kaha Sultan Dam’ that was later renamed as ‘Maranj Dam’ after MNA Sardar Jafar Khan Leghari pushed it and Nespak had again started survey and feasibility.
He recalled that Nespak was given the consultancy contract project with specifications of 12 Megawatt of electricity generation, 0.8 million acre feet (MAF) storage capacity and 0.6 MAF live storage. The proposed dam’s height was suggested at 107 feet and it would irrigate 120,000 acre area.
Gorchani disclosed that project’s approved PC-1 cost was Rs 350 million and a sum of Rs 255 million was allocated in PSDP 2020-21.
He said, he had recently requested the federal minister for water resources to speed up work on the project to save people from floods, bring water for agriculture and produce cheap electricity.
Zain Malik said that hill torrent pathways could not support the water flow in the wake of torrential rains and steps they had taken for strengthening the pathways proved insufficient. Rains broke all records and were 400 times more than usual, he said.
He said the irrigation department teams equipped with heavy machinery were working hard to strengthen the protective wall to save urban and rural population from hill torrents and water from the Indus.
“Initiatives will be taken for permanent and lasting solution of the problem in a coordinated manner once the rains stop and life returns to normal to pave the way for rehabilitation and rebuilding lives of the people tormented by floods,” he said.
APP/ahj-ifi