| Water crisis worsens in Kishtwar | | People fetch water from hand pumps, streams | |  Asif Iqbal Naik
Early Times Report
Kishtwar, June 13: Kishtwar is facing acute shortage of water and people are forced to fetch water from hand pums and streams.
All complaints to PHE have gone unheeded.
The people of village Chehar and its adjoining areas having population of 3000 souls are facing acute water shortage and the people are ferrying water either from hand pumps or from nearby streams causes lot of inconvenience to them even during the holy month of Ramzan.
Speaking to "Early Times", inhabitant of Cherhar Shabir Ahmed said that they have to travel around 3 KM to reach the hand pump to fetch water and after toiling hard to fill up the canes, buckets and other water storage utensils, they had to transport them in vehicle by paying around Rs. 100 as rent. He said that this is routine issue for many villagers added that sometime they have to wait for hours at nearby water pumps to fetch water. He said that influential people in the villager receive regular water supply while the majority of the villagers receive the same occasionally. He said that they also visited the office of but they in return gets only assurance and no water. He said that women are also facing lot of problems and have to travel several kilometers to fetch water.
Meanwhile similar reports have received from Poochal, Hatta, Sangrabata, Malipath, Shaheedi Road Kishtwar, Link road, Tund, Sarkoot, Sangrabata and interior areas of the Kishtwar town as a result of which the anger among the people was simmering.
The people alleged that officials of the department put the water connections out of main gravity line on sale and demanded immediate removal of illegal water connections from main gravity line, beside also demanded removal of illegal hocking from main Naigard water supply scheme. As per details, out of 8 inch water gravity, only 2.5 to 3 inch water supply reaches at Kishtwar filtration plant while rest of the 5 inch water had given to influential persons.
He said that during the holy month of Ramazan, the public of Kishtwar are facing acute shortage of drinking water as PHE Department has no proper distribution system in place.
It is pertinent to mention that Deputy Commissioner Kishtwar also constituted a task force for checking the illegal hocking in Naigard water supply scheme, but despite the lapse of more than one month only few illegal connections were removed. |
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