NOC still awaited from two departments, funds also not enough

ANANTNAG: Almost no work has been done on a Water Supply Scheme, here in Dachnipora area of Anantnag district, more than 14 years after it was sanctioned with the aim to provide potable drinking water to about twenty villages.
This water supply scheme in Pahalgam area of Dachnipora was sanctioned in the year 2008 and was to be completed at an estimated cost of about 19 crore rupees. “It was finally taken up for execution, four years later, in 2012,” a source in the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the scheme was to provide more than 45 MGD (million gallons daily) to some twenty-odd villages, including Pahalgam, Sallar, Kullar, Wulerhama, and some others in the area.
“The natural water resources in this area have been contaminated, and the water has been rendered not fit for human consumption. That is what created a need for a water supply scheme,” the source said.
Unfortunately, there has been almost no progress on the scheme. There have been a couple of reasons for the delay, one of which, the sources say, is paucity of funds.
“Sadly, there has been a scarcity of funds, apart from some official apathy as well,” the source said, adding that the lack of a no-objection certificate from the Roads and Buildings department and from the Irrigation Department also remain as roadblocks to the project.
Technical Officer for the PHE in the area, Parvez Ahmad, acknowledged that the two departments are yet to provide the NOC after all these years. “The work has been allotted and some piping material has also been procured for the project. But this NOC for an approach road to the site of the water supply scheme remains the impediment,” Ahmad told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the higher officials have been approached and even the contractor is being asked to pursue the issuance of this NOC. “But thus far we have had no luck, despite the fact that the Irrigation division is an in-house department of the PHE,” the official said.
People in the area, meanwhile, rue the lack of clean drinking water and say that they are forced to consume contaminated water from open, natural water sources, which cause frequent outbreaks of diseases in the area.
“When this scheme was commissioned, we thought our water woes will finally end, but it was not to be. A decade and a half later, the situation remains the same,” the locals told Kashmir Reader.

Suhail A Shah