KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad All Shah has said Guddu barrage is the cumulative point of passing floodwater from all rivers of Pakistan and outfalls into the Arabian Sea.

Presiding over a meeting on pre-monsoon flood preparation and disaster risk management at the CM House here on Monday, he said the Indus posed great threat to the entire length throughout the province asit ran on the ridge and,therefore, strengthening of protective bunds and repair of vulnerable points were on his top priority.

The chief minister said his government had already started strengthening vulnerable points to protect people and their property during the forthcoming monsoon season.

Special secretary irrigation Junald Memon informed the meeting that the flood season normally started from the second week of July and continued up to September.

Monsoon started from July 10 and early monsoon had begun with light rains in the upcountry and, therefore, low flood was expected, he added.

Giving synoptic situation, he quoted weekly weather outlook for rivers` catchments from 15 to 21 June issued by the Met office as saying that a trough of westerly wave lies over Kashmir and adjoining areasandseasonallowovernortheastBalochistan.

Scattered dust thunderstorm/rain of moderate intensity is expected over the upper catchments of all major rivers from June 19.

He said there would neither be very heavy rains nor flood situation in the rivers.

Mr Memon quoted another outlook for summer monsoon 2017 as saying that consequent upon prevailing ocean and atmospheric conditions, summer monsoon is expecred to be normal in the first half and below normal in the second half of the season.

He said that based on statistical and dynamical downstream of global circulation models, there would be area-weighted rainfall during monsoon season over the country and was expected to fall short of long-term average. However, rainfall would be highly variable over temporal and spatial scale.

According to the outlook, there is a high probability of localised rainfalls which may generate flash flooding in mountainous and sub-mountainous regions. Localised events of rainfall coupled with rapid melting in the glaciated regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral may trigger floods.

It may be noted that there are certain stages of flood in Sindh. Flow of up to 200,000 cusecs at Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri barrages is considered to be normal and that of 200,000 to 250,000 cusecs low flood.

Flow of 350,000 to 500,000 cusecs is consid-ered medium flood, 500,000 to 700,000 cusecs high flood 700,000 to 900,000 cusecs very high flood and above 900,000 cusecs super flood. At present it is less than normal situation at all barrages.

Abkalani arrangements The chief minister also directed the irrigation department to make Abl(alani arrangements such as clearance of jungles, levelling, soaking and repair of bunds, identification of borrow pit areas, identification and treatment of leaks, filling of ditches, establishment of flood warning centres, deployment of earth-moving machinery, construction of katcha landhies, procurement of Abkalani materials and patrolling on bunds.

He was told that during the super flood of 2010 five breaches had occurred along the LM bund which had been raised by six feet.

When the chief minister pointed out that the KK bund remained vulnerable during the 2010 flood, special secretary Memon said stone pitching and apron had been provided to strengthen the bund and now it was quite stable.

He said the KK link bund was also vulnerable and it was connected with KK feeder bund. Stone apron, which was washed out during the 2016 flood, has now been recouped.The chief minister said Sukkur Begari bund, from zero to four miles, was a defence line and protected the city, which is just behind the bund.

Sukkur barrage chief engineer told the meeting that short stone stud had been restored and stone apron up to two miles laid and now the bund was strong enough.

Mr Memon informed the chief minister that necessary machinery had been moved to vulnerable points such as KK bund, KK link bund, KK feeder bund, Old Tori bund and SM bund as per flood magnitude prescribed in the bund manual.

The chief minister directed the irrigation department to provide him a list of the officers assigned the emergency duty at flood emergency centres and of the officials on patrolling duty along with their mobile phone numbers so that he could remain in contact with them.

He asked his principal secretary Sohail Rajput to issue necessary directives to divisional commissioners to take precautionary measures before the start of the monsoon season.

The meeting was attended by CM`s principal secretary Sohail Rajput, Junaid Memon, chief engineers Aijaz Shaikh, Irshad Memon and Bahi Khan Lakho, managing director of Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority Mohammad Khan Lakho and Xen Shahbaz Akhtar.