| Budgam villages reel under darkness, faces shortage of drinking water | | Essential commodities missing at many ration depots | | Mohammad Sarfaraz
Early Times Report
BUDGAM, Feb 9: Scores of rural areas in Budgam district are without water and drinking water.
According to locals dozens of villages, including Batpora, Chewa, Arath, Gsgoo, Watervani, Jawalpora, Nasarpora Khag, Gund and its adjacent areas are facing acute shortage of power.
Naseer Ahmad from Gund area said that, the power supply was erratic for the past one week and voltage is also low and department of PDD are hardly bothered about the sufferings of common people. Unscheduled power cuts continue to irk consumers in the metered and unmetered areas of Budgam district, but the condition in non metered areas is bad to worse during these winter months, said Naseer.
Another local resident from Nasarpora said that the electricity is disrupted for almost 10 hours in a day despite that we are paying a monthly power tariff on regular basis.
The voltage is so low that it fails to illuminate even a small room. We have no choice but to take dinner in candlelight, unfortunately the departments concerned has failed to install the iron poles in our area, we are still having those decades old wooden electric poles, said locals.
Locals said that our village is hardly some kilometers far from the district headquarter Budgam but still there are scores of villages that are without electricity from many days, while as there is no safe drinking water, and with the result there are chances of many diseases, if the problem was not solved at the earliest. The ration depots are lacking of essential stocks, like we have no sugar, kerosene and LPG gas availability on stores, snow has not been cleared yet from many roads in rural areas of Budgam district, said sources. There are reports that scores of popular trees have fallen in many villages during the recent snowfall, and that has lead to the disruption of electricity in various areas of this central Kashmir district. Other areas of the district are also facing the same problems, while as locals have used their own manpower to clear the inner links, sources told Early Times. |
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