LAHORE, Nov 21 (TNS): Federal Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda says Pakistan wants to resolve all the water-related issues with India in accordance with the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).<\/p>\n
\u201cI am ready to sit with India to resolve these issues amicably. But I will never compromise on our country\u2019s water rights, sovereignty and dignity. I will neither do any wrong with India nor will allow India to do the same with my country,\u201d the minister said while responding to various questions raised by journalists during a media talk at Wapda House on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The question was raised in the context of India\u2019s delay in getting its hydropower projects at Chenab and Jhelum basins inspected by Pakistani authorities during the last few months after initial willingness.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn various occasions during the past, the situation appeared to be problematic and difficult especially at a time when both the countries were about to resolve various issues. So I don\u2019t want to comment in a way that makes the situation problematic while resolving the water-related and other issues,\u201d said the minister who was flanked by the Wapda chairman, retired Lt Gen Muzammil Hussain, Federal Secretary Shumail Khwaja and Joint Secretary Syed Mehr Ali Shah.<\/p>\n
Speaking about water allocation and distribution issues among the provinces, he claimed that the chief ministers, his ministry and other stakeholders were on the same page. For this, he said, a sum of Rs1 billion had been arranged to install telemeters so as to end provinces\u2019 complaints about the water share. This project, he said, was not executed by the outgoing PML-N government.<\/p>\n
He said he and his team, within a short span of time, had removed various problems in the construction of Naulong Dam in Balochistan. \u201cI am happy to announce that we have resolved the funding issues, paving the way for launching this project in near future,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n
He further said the issues related to Dasu, Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams were being resolved on a fast track. He said: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t like to keep important matters secret from the people of Pakistan; every institution including the judiciary and NAB are welcome to see and monitor what we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the PTI government was reviewing the list of those honest and capable officers \/ bureaucrats who remained sidelined as OSDs during the five-year term of the PML-N government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an impression that N-league still dominates the bureaucracy. But I believe that there are few such bureaucrats. Still there are many honest and competent officers who spent most of time during N-league government as OSDs. We are reviewing the lists of such officers so as to appoint them at important positions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said his ministry had decided to convert Wapda into a corporate entity so that it could work independently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAHORE, Nov 21 (TNS): Federal Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda says Pakistan wants to resolve all the water-related issues with India in accordance with the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). \u201cI am ready to sit with India to resolve these issues amicably. But I will never compromise on our country\u2019s water rights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lahore","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80006,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80004\/revisions\/80006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}