‘Steep cost escalation’ on project causes work to be stopped

Anantnag: The construction of an Over Head Tank (OHT) has been abandoned midway by the Jal Shakti Department, here in the main town of Anantnag in south Kashmir, much to the dismay of the general public.
The OHT was expected to end the drinking water crisis of more than half a dozen villages, which have been facing an acute shortage of potable water. The project was sanctioned a few years back and the construction of the OHT was started in Baagh-e-Nowgam village on the periphery of the main town Anantnag.
“More than three-crore rupees were sanctioned for the project, which included the OHT as well as pipe-laying process in the villages,” a source in the Jal Shakti department told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the OHT would have been fed by a local spring and villages including Monghal, Soyanpora, Bagh Mohalla, Chak Monghal, and Bagh-e-Nowgam would have benefited from the scheme.
“Work on the project was executed in 2020 and some months of the year 2021. But the project was then abandoned, without any explanations by the department, and has been lying like that for over a year now,” the source told Kashmir Reader.
He said that more than 50 percent of the work has been done on the project and its abandonment is as baffling for the general public as it is for some in the department.
Locals rue that they have been entirely dependent on contaminated, unfiltered water of the local springs and streams for their daily water needs. “This project was a ray of hope and we thought our water woes might finally come to an end. But it was not to be,” the locals told Kashmir Reader.
They said that they have been regularly approaching the officials concerned for the redressal of their water woes, but to no avail. “Nobody seems to know what went wrong with the scheme. All we have been getting is false promises from the officials of the department,” the locals said.
Some locals have also filed RTIs to get the required attention of the higher-ups, but no steps have so far been taken to restore work on the project.

Suhail A Shah