The Ministry of Water Resources announced today, Wednesday, it has taken new measures to ensure the fair distribution of water shares among the governorates.
The ministry stated in a statement: “Given the conditions of water scarcity that the country is going through, and for the purpose of ensuring the fair distribution of water quotas between the governorates and the delivery of water to the tails of canals and irrigation projects, the ministry took several measures, including removing all kinds of abuses, and campaigns to remove abuses began on 11/6 / 2022 represented by the ministry’s cadres, and in partnership with the ministries of agriculture and electricity and with the support of the security forces, and many of pumps, submersibles, and siphons were lifted, and the outlets feeding the lakes were filled and dried because of their great impact on increasing water consumption and flooding agricultural lands with water.
It added that in previous years, its cadres were following campaigns to remove various transgressions, and on 7/16/2023, the Prime Minister instructed to remove the transgressive fish lakes in all governorates, especially the regions north of Baghdad (Salah al-Din and al-Ishaqi) and south Baghdad (Al-Madain) to ensure the reduction of water consumption and the delivery of water to the southern governorates.
The Ministry indicated that it had notified the owners of the lakes to prevent fish farming for all governorates, and to file lawsuits against the transgressors, as there are (200) judicial decisions to remove in the district of Al-Madain only within about five months, and these campaigns were stopped on 5/16/2023 and then started on 7/16/2023, that is, a period of nearly two months that was sufficient for the transgressors to sell the production.
It continued: “Around 50-70 lakes of fish are being removed daily, and the total number of these lakes exceeds a thousand lakes in Al-Madain district only for the purpose of completing the work entrusted to it before the start of the next winter season, and to ensure the delivery of water to the southern governorates and the preservation of water storage.
Source: National Iraqi News Agency