'Seistan. Irrigation report of the Perso-Afghan Arbitration Commission, 1902-1905. Volume I. Report and appendices. Simla: Government of India Foreign Department, 1906' [‎83v] (171/500)

68
[Chap. XI.
r i i iMVMaVinn lias already endeavoured to do this ; the difficulty is that
Colonel j S m eet all wants, and there is no necessity
inside the frontier coal and petroleum no ^ ex p ens iv e experiments on a form of
for private individua P ^ districts across the frontier are
rv^r ulsr^me tract inside India can he found where such an enter-
prise will pay, no progress can be made.
But though power will not be required to drive pumping machinery, it will
be needed to!or£ stone breakers and --[ e ‘ e ot m ^[^t P f ^ a ^ h
risers so that the absence of pumping will not relieve us trom tn. anxiety ol
risers so tnai his searching for a source of power. Since
r * o S rt e thebU ' °” e ° P the river has a considerable slope* it will be
easv to get sites suitable for turbines ; and water power sufficient to drive all
the machfnery can be relied on for works in the trough of the river above Bandar.
i-KanS Khan, in all but one year in a generation Even ,n that year power
can be <rot by going high enough up the river and placing an emergency power
house to” be used if needed ; steam will be so expensive that 50 or 6o miles of
electric transmission will be no great obstacle, the river has never been known to
rlrv nn ahnvp. the Rudbar canal head.
There are flour mills driven by water power in the delta at Kala-i-Fath,
Nad-i-Ali and Warmal. So that even in the delta small installations of water
power can be arranged for.
The wind is not likely to be of much use j it only blows with constant force
in the hottest time of the year, and to the best advantage in the delta where power
is not likely to be much required ; for there is little or no ballast for concrete there
in and all masonry work must be built of brick, or stone from the Kuh-i«
Khwaja. If, however, unwatering has to be done in the delta, the hot weather
will be a good time to do it; the supply is then at its minimum and the wind at
its maximum. The labour is free from the harvest about the end of July ; the
floods do not usually arrive in large volume till the middle or end of March,
while the wind can be relied on from the end of May to the end of August.
Wages of labour and cost of excavation.
We may now consider the rate of hire of labour on which the cost of earth
work, bricks, lime and masonry work will ultimately depend, and then the cost of
fuel and limestone which are second only in importance to the wages of labour.
Since the conditions of life in Seistan are those of Persia rather than of
India, it will be reassuring to the engineer new to Seistan to have all the infor
mation collected in detail; this has been given in Appendices 5 to 12 of this
Report. It will be seen that the labour problem is very much the same as that in
Baluchistdn, and will be familiar to railway and roads and buildings men who
have worked on the frontier, but not so to those who have worked on the plains
of India.
The labour will be recruited in much the same way as it is in the Quetta
Skilled labour district ; the highly skilled artizans will be
brought from he Punjab, with whom Seis-
t&n is likely to be very popular as the conditions of life and of climate suit them
well. ^ This class of labour is not likely to cost much more in Seistan than it
does in the Quetta district, as food is cheap and the difference will be little
more than the extra cost of conveying the men to and from Quetta to Seistan.
There are wu/more skilled labourers such as masons, carpenters, blacksmiths
in Seist&n than suffice for the ordinary requirements of the country, and the
cheapest and best sources to recruit these will be India. Doubtless some would
come from Kain and Meshed, but they would not be trained to our class of work,
and would be neither cheap or efficient.
Some of the labour for
Unskilled labour.
of monotonous manual toil.
earthwork will be got locally, the Seistdni of
Persian extraction is inured to such labour,
but those of Baluch extraction soon tire