Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi has written a formal letter to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, expressing serious concern over the decades-long delay in the Chashma Right Bank Canal (CRBC) project.

According to the letter sent on Monday, the failure to initiate the project even after 35 years is creating distrust between the federal and provincial governments.

Afridi noted that among major irrigation schemes planned for all four provinces, the CRBC project remains the only one on which no progress has been made.

The letter states that, under the 1991 Water Apportionment Accord, major irrigation projects for the other three provinces have already been completed.

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) had approved the Rs189 billion project in October 2022, yet implementation has still not begun.

Afridi recalled that in 2016, the Council of Common Interests (CCI) decided the project’s financing formula — 65% to be funded by the federal government and 35% by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The provincial government has already released Rs2 billion for land acquisition during 2024-25 and has allocated another Rs5 billion for 2025-26.

However, the federal government’s allocation of only Rs100 million in the current PSDP has been described as a “non-serious approach,” while WAPDA’s land acquisition process has also been slow.

The chief minister stressed in the letter that the CRBC project is vital for transforming the economy and agriculture of terrorism-affected areas, adding that it could yield an annual economic benefit of Rs38 billion and irrigate more than 280,000 acres of land.