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| Incomplete construction, faulty design defeats purpose of constructing bunkers in border villages | | As usual border residents still expose to Pak shelling | |  Akshay Azad
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 19: The individual and community bunkers, constructed for the safety of villagers along the International Border in Samba and Jammu districts, are either incomplete or unfit for use, making the villagers still vulnerable to the shelling from Pakistan.
The Union Home Ministry had sanctioned the construction of 14400 bunkers along Jammu, Kathua, Samba, Rajouri and Poonch districts. In district Samba a total of 2515 individual and 8 community bunkers were sanctioned out of which 315 individual were shown as completed in January 2019, while it was also claimed that work on 200 individual and 4 community bunkers had been taken up.
A visit to Nanga Panchayat of tehsil Ramgarh of district Samba, exposed these claims of government. For the population of over 700 households, only 150 individual bunkers were sanctioned and many of them are still incomplete. Construction of the bunker of Sardari Lal son of Kesar Ram of village Nanga was left incomplete and it was found half filled with water. Similar was the condition of the under-construction bunker of Gurdas Chand son of Sarda Ram of Nanga.
"The contractor had left these bunkers incomplete since last over six months due to some unknown reasons and has not resumed the construction. Almost all the bunkers are not plastered while power supply is not given in any of the bunker", Gurdyal Chand, husband of Sarpanch of Nanga Panchayat said.
He further said that not even a single bunker has been handed over to the beneficiaries as the bunkers were not completed in actual sense. "May be the bunkers are shown as complete in papers but these are not fit for use this time and even after rains, one cannot stay for few hours in bunkers as it has no toilet facilities or kitchen facility", he further said.
Nanga village is surrounded from International border from three sides and is most vulnerable to firing but majority of villagers have not got any bunker.
As per official records, in Jammu district a total of 1200 individual bunkers and 120 community bunkers were sanctioned out of which 326 individual and 44 community bunkers were shown as completed in January 2019 while work on another 576 individual and 41 community bunkers were shown as taken up.
A local of panchayat Treva of tehsil Arnia claimed that out of 1500 households only 60 bunkers were constructed but most of them were left incomplete. "The entrance of bunkers was not covered by roof while some of the community bunkers were captured by local henchmen, making them out of bounds for locals", the local said, adding that due to faulty design, the bunkers are filled with rain water or water seeped into them, making them non-useable.
The condition of bunkers in two panchayats exposed the tall claims of Union as well as State government to provide security to the border residents, who are still depend on their own means to fight the enemy fire and the threat gets intensified with growing border skirmishes.
DC Samba, Rohit Khajuria said that he would take cognizance of the matter and would also initiate action if required. |
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