Sopore: The residents of several villages of Sopore area of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district are up in arms against the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department for failing to provide adequate water supply to them.

The residents of several villages of Sopore including Banpora, Rather Mohalla, Shalpora and Baig Mohalla of Dangerpora village, which is also the native village of MLA Sopore said that the authorities in the PHE department are pushing them to face hardships in these bone chilling days.

Accusing the PHE officials for ignoring their plights, the residents here have demanded immediate redressal of their grievances.

Inhabitants told ‘Kashmir Vision’ that they are facing immense hardships due to the acute shortage of water supply from the last few years, which is making their life difficult.

They said that the water scarcity in their area has caused diseases among the villagers as they are being forced to fetch water from nearby dirty streams.

Bashir Ahmed Rather, one of the residents said that by using the muddy water, the health of most of the villagers including the children has got affected.

He said that the womenfolk are being forced to walk miles to fetch water. “The authorities are ignoring us at all fronts. Despite repeated assurances and promises by PHE officials, the department has failed to provide adequate drinking water to the residents here,” he said.

They said that the officials assured them several times that the matter would be resolved within a short period of time and also claimed to fix a new pipeline, which would provide water to the whole area soon but all the assurances turned hoax on the ground.

A PHE official told ‘Kashmir Vision’ that the work to fix a new pipeline was stopped due to some “personal rivalries” in the village.

“I request the locals to cooperate with us so that we could make it possible to provide adequate water supply to them,” he said.

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