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| Kashmir loses Dal, inhabitants lose livelihood to Govt indifference | | | Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Mar 3: Due to indifference of the Lakes and Waterways Development Authority (LAWDA), the residents of Dal Lake are losing livelihood and facing undue delay in rehabilitation.
Over the years, both state and Central government leaders have made umpteen promises and allocated hundreds of crores to clean up the Dal Lake. But on ground nothing seems visible. The valley is losing the treasure due to lack of concern of the authorities.
Take one shikara ride on the lake and there will be no denying the extent of its degradation.
Over 50,000 people live on the Dal Lake, including houseboat owners, vegetable growers, and fisher folk. Tourism, agriculture, and fishing form the backbone of the economy on the lake, and these are the activities that are facing the heat.
Sharif Ahmad, who lives on the lake and grows vegetables all year around, said the government cleans a portion of Dal Lake around the Shar-e-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC), where national and international conferences are held.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi was shown only the small, clean portion of the lake when he visited. De-weeding around the SKICC is done manually and using machines, but the interior of the lake is turning into a swamp," he said.
Another inhabitant Rafi Ahmad said, "The production of fish and vegetables has decreased, affecting the livelihood of many people."
"Now, even tourists don't stay for more than a day on the lake due to the increasing pollution. Even the growth of lotus stem (called nadru in Kashmiri), used in the local cuisine, and fish has been adversely affected."
Bashir Ahmad, a fisherman catches 1 kilogram of fish daily these days. "During summers, I catch around 3 kilograms. Fifteen years ago, I would catch around 10 kilograms of fish every day. We hardly find fish in the lake anymore," he rued.
Experts say one of the main reasons for the deterioration of the lake's condition is the dumping of huge amounts of untreated waste.
According to a report by the Jammu and Kashmir State Pollution Control Board, Srinagar generates 201 million litres of sewage daily but has the capacity to treat only 53.8 million litres.
The government has also failed to upgrade the technology of three Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) around the lake, as recommended by scientists from the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and promised by the government in 2014.
The government has rehabilitated some fishermen to Srinagar's Habak area, but Bashir said they want to return and live on or around the lake.
"We were rehabilitated 10 years ago on the promise of being provided all facilities. But there are no facilities, and our colony is always waterlogged," he explained.
The numerous projects launched to clean up and preserve the Dal Lake have been ineffective or lacked proper implementation. In 2007, the Jammu and Kashmir government began a Rs 416-crore project to depopulate the lake and rehabilitate these families at a site called Rakh-I-Arth Bemina on the outskirts of Srinagar.
It was meant to be developed with infrastructure like housing, roads, water supply, electricity, drainage, sewerage and other community facilities for the displaced. The project was supposed to be completed in three years, but even till 2018, authorities managed to allot only 2,600 of the proposed 10,500 plots. These exclude the fisherfolk families that were rehabilitated to Habak. |
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