Budgam village decries water scarcity

by Mahdeesa Altaf

Srinagar

Residents of the Waterwani village of central Kashmiri’s Budgam district face acute shortage of safe drinking water from a very long period of time, thus putting their lives at risk of waterborne diseases.

The village Waterwani is six kilometres away from the district headquarters and only two kilometres from the urban service reservoir, Dadina Budgam.

People of the area claim that the water supplied to them is not safe for drinking. The tapes are leaking at many places. In past, many times the people of the area have protested various times and registered their claims to higher authorities including PHE department and District Commissioners office. “It looks like that our repeated pleas fell on deaf ears,” said Ghulam Rasool, a local.

But the people were hopeful that their problem will be addressed and will get the safe drinking water once the urban service reservoir at Dadina will be functional.

Shuja Abbas Qazi, a student of Law said, “From the very first day of lying this master plan we were promised drinking water from the scheme. Even we objected the lying of this pipeline through our village but the then AEE claimed of having proper orders to provide our village water from Sukhnag water scheme’s nearest service reservoir, but later on it was denied by authorities.”

“We protested a few times to get water from nearest water reservoir which is just 2 km away from our village, as the water which we receive becomes dirty in rains and is not available 24 hrs. We have put our demands in front of authorities but they took no action,” said Sajjad Hussaini, a local youth.

Talking to Kashmir life, Ghulam Ahmed Beigh, Executive Engineer, PHE Department, Budgam said, he will look into it and take up the matter on priority.

Executive Engineer master plan, Basharat Ahmad said, “We had never such plans to provide water supply from Sukhnag scheme to said village,” adding that we are trying to end the woes of people.