WATER DAM LOTUS SOCIAL WELFARE TRUST PROJECT

COMMUNITY CONSTRUCTION OF THE SPILLWAY OF ALL PAKISTAN DAM.

A lack of water is considered the main factor inhibiting the development of a sustainable food production base in pakistan.lotus social welfare trust international works with communities to build earth embankment dams and masonry weirs for water supplies for domestic, livestock and irrigation purposes. The Trust operates a dam construction unit of four agricultural tractors with dam scoops, trailers and water bowsers. Despite the use of such equipment, earth dam construction with an adequate impoundment and properly constructed spillway is still an onerous and skilled task. Adequate preparations and precautions must be carried out and it is extremely demanding of manual labour. The sheer physical work is enormous, particularly for the general workers very many of whom will be women desperate to improve their water security situation.

·        Any community engaged in dam building has a great deal of work to undertake which is particularly difficult without adequate equipment. Partly because of the exodus of men from the rural areas there are invariably more women and girls involved in dam construction than men and boys.

·        Rocks have to be cleared and sand and aggregate collected for building the rocks into the head wall and spillway of the dam.

·        The foundation of the dam wall has to be dug out, some 5 metres wide and deep enough to either reach rock or a solid underlying surface.

·        A site has to be cleared and prepared from where material for the dam wall can be scraped and the dam wall itself has to be consolidated.

·        Concrete and building mortar has to be mixed for the several local builders who will be involved in the masonry work of the dam.

·        Community work includes the collecting and transporting of large volumes of rock to the construction site to stone-pitch the entire upstream bank to reduce damage from the impounded water.

Excavating the core trench for Malir Landhi Dam

Apart from livestock and domestic use, the dams provide water for irrigation. Wherever possible irrigation schemes are constructed down-stream of a dam so that water gravitates naturally to garden children without either the initial or the operating costs of engines, motors or pumps. Water is distributed within the children park by canals to flooded beds or to simple low-level tanks from where water can easily be drawn and carried to the irrigation beds. Water supplied to such small-scale irrigation schemes frequently becomes the corner stone of food security systems within a community.

Give A Dam Campaign

Lotus social welfare Trust international is a key partner in the Give A Dam Campaign; a collaboration of local and international NGO’s Local Government administration, Government agencies, the private sector and Donor partners. The campaign has identified the construction of dams as one of the main solutions to the chronic food shortages in Matabeleland all Pakistan. The construction of small and medium size dams, coupled with the development of small, community managed, gravity fed irrigation schemes is the foundation of a co-ordinated program for sustainable improvement of the food security situation in the Province. The Campaign sets out to construct approximately 100 dams and at least 50 irrigation schemes,