Anantnag: Despite crores being already spent on multiple water supply initiatives, several villages in South Kashmir’ s Anantnag remain completely devoid of potable drinking water.
Besides, a faulty tube well covers more than 1500 kanals of paddy land with a thick coat of silt, rendering it unsuitable for cultivation at least in the near future.
The affected villages include Kamad, Chchripora, Chak Kamad and a few other villages in the vicinity.
As per local and official sources the first attempt made to give the residents clean drinking water was made in early ‘90s when an over head tank and a bore-well were constructed in Ugjan Teng locality of the area.
“The scheme developed a snag and despite lakhs of rupees being spent to rectify the snag no good came out of it,” a source in the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department told Kashmir Reader.
He said that as a result the scheme only catered to Chichripora village and the other villages got their water supply from a spring in Pethbugh area of Kamad.
“But last year after an outbreak made in above hundred people sick in Kamad area, the water supply from the spring was closed down leaving the villages again dependent on the Ugjan Teng tube-well,” the source said.
These days, however, the Ugjan Teng tube-well is also out of order as the first tube-well stopped working. A second one was dug out but it unfortunately oozed with slit filled mud water.
“The water gushed down to the nearby paddy fields and covered more than 1500 kanals of them in a thick blanket of silt. We are dead worried. We don’t even know whether we will be able to cultivate anything this year or not,” the residents of the area told Kashmir Reader.
A third tube-well was dug to cater the water supply needs but it sucked out fresh water for only two days after which the silt from the second tube-well made way to it and rendered it useless as well.
The residents of the area have been moving from pillar to post and holding frequent protest demonstrations to garner the attention of the authorities to no avail.
“These faulty initiatives have become money minting machines for the officials. They spend some money on them and give an impression that they were trying,” the residents alleged.
They demanded that instead of spending so much money on these useless initiatives, a proper water supply scheme should have been initiated in the area to put an end to the water woes of the people.
“Every year our children and elderly fall sick in hordes and every year we hit the roads with a hope that someone will listen to us. But nothing of that sort has happened till now,” the residents lamented.
Kashmir Reader contacted the local Assistant Executive Engineer (AEE), Reyaz Ahmad, regarding the issue (quote awaited)

Suhail A Shah