Water

Country Water Action: Pakistan
Farmers Manage and Police Irrigation Systems
(May 2006)

Water theft in irrigation systems has been a chronic problem in Pakistan. Successive governments have spent decades attempting to solve the problem. Newly-formed farmers’ organizations, with prompting from the government, have come up with an effective solution: managing, policing, and owning their irrigation systems.

Contents Forming Farmers' Organizations Curbing Water Theft Patrolling Irrigation Systems Sharing Community Water

The rampant water theft in Pakistan is slowly being erased as Pakistan’s farmers band together and form Farmers’ Organizations (FOs) that effectively prevent the illegal use of communities’ water resources.

A policy shift to quash water crimes has also spurred the government to establish the Punjab Irrigation and Development Authority (PIDA) and Area Water Boards (AWBs), which function as regulatory bodies and promote the communities’ ownership of irrigation systems.

“The idea was to involve the people to tackle these problems, and it is working,” said Sajjad Siddiqui, who heads the communications department at PIDA.

A year after FOs and AWBs were established, a performance evaluation of 85 farmer groups at Lower Chenab Canal (East) Circle in Faisalabad reports that most of the FOs have succeeded in bringing the incidence of water theft to zero. Nobody steals irrigation water anymore.

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Before, the public irrigation system in Pakistan was corrupt. Big-time farmers used more water than what they paid for. The poor did not get adequate water and, as a result, refused to pay for the service. 

Siddiqui noted that the problem intensified when some farmers pulled down canal banks to let water flow into their fields. Others, reported to be in collusion with irrigation department officials, drained fields using pipes. Although theft is punishable under the law, flouting the rules had almost become normal—people even took pride in stealing water and cheating on tariffs. Siddiqui adds, “Practically no one owned the systems but everyone was using them.” 

When PIDA was formed in 1997 to promote participatory irrigation management in Punjab province, it transferred irrigation management responsibilities to autonomous bodies at three tiers—to the Provincial Irrigation and Drainage Authority, to AWBs and to FOs. 

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New institutions, such as the PIDA and the AWBs, are the government’s response to the deterioration in irrigation management, including poor maintenance. FOs were then placed in charge of policing field-level distribution, controlling theft, resolving disputes, and collecting water tariffs. In return, they get to use 40% of the water tariffs to meet operation and maintenance costs.

People who take more than their share or steal are first issued warnings and those that continue to do so after being warned are charged fines as high as 20 times the price of the stolen water.

“If any one steals water, he deprives another farmer of his rights and, believe me, no one is ready to let go of a single drop of water from his share,” says Sagheer Ahmed, president of a farmer organization. 

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When each farmer uses the recognized fair share of water, everyone, even those at the tail end of the irrigation system, will get water.

PIDA officials said putting the management system in place was not easy especially because of some farmer groups’ opposition that found ways to beat the system. “We had to recruit social mobilizers to visit rural areas and explain the idea to locals. The system was introduced only after we convinced people of the benefits of participatory management,” says M. Aslam Qureshi, a PIDA official.

The system has been so successful that other provinces have now begun following the path shown by Punjab.