ISLAMABAD: With 14 per cent water shortage estimated for the Rabi season, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) asked the government on Wednesday to move towards building dams on an urgent basis to avoid an economic loss of billions of rupees every year.

After a meeting of the authority`s advisory committee, Irsa chairman and member Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ragib Khan said Pakistan had incurred over Rs1.6 to Rs2.1 trillion economic losses in the recent Kharif season in the absence of dams and water storage capacity.

He said wastage of one million acres feet (MAF) of water was estimated to cause an economic loss of Rs60bn. About 36 MAF water had gone into the sea last season, including about 8.6 MAF which was required to flow below the Kotri barrage for environmental reasons. This meant over 27 MAF water had been wasted in just one season that was equivalent to the storage capacity of three big dams, he said.

Mr Khan said that Irsa had been asking the government for long to take decisive initiatives towards building new dams. It had also written to the government to divert all development funds towards building new dams as a national emergency, he added.

Member Irsa Punjab Rao Irshad Ali Khan said the government should move swiftly to build Kalabagh and Bhasha dams simultaneously and construct Munda dam for long-term protection of lives and properties in KP`s Nowshera region.

He said these dams should have been built in the 80s and 90s but ironically Pakistan had lost over three decades without building even one.

Irsa spokesman Khalid Idrees Rana told Dawn that the advisory committee had approved the water distribution plan for all the four provinces while talcing into account 14pc water shortage.

It put water availability in the irrigation system at 31.7 MAF during Rabi. It would include 25.62 MAF in the shape of river flows and 9.48 MAF from carryover stocks in reservoirs. About 3.28 MAF water was estimated as system losses.

Given the fact that Balochistan and KP were exempt from cuts in water share because of their infrastructure constraints, the remaining 29.98 MAF would be shared between Sindh and Punjab on the basis of 14pc losses, he said.

As a consequence, Punjab would get 17.08 MAF in Rabi while the share of Sindh was put at 12.9 MAF. KP would get 700,000 acres feet and Balochistan 1.02 MAF. The availability of 31.7 MAF water for Rabi 2015 is slightly less than previous year`s of 33.10 MAF.

However, it is far better than the average availability of 30.06 MAF over the past 10 years.

He said Sindh had suggested that shortage should be projected at 11 or 12pc to send a positive signal to farmers as more rains could be expected during the season, but other Irsa members did not agree and argued that people would use more water if they were informed that shortage would be less. They allowed Sindh to draw its share early in the season in case of need.