Never ending water woes of Sundargarh villagers

ROURKELA: IT is only December and summer still a long way off, but people of Chitapedi panchayat in Nuagaon block are already facing pangs of water scarcity.

With not many villages under the panchayat having access to safe drinking water sources like tube wells or deep bore-wells, villagers are forced to depend on unclean and contaminated open water bodies for their survival.

Villagers of Dhipatoli hamlet collect drinking water from an open well in an agriculture land. Some even resort to collecting polluted water that accumulates in low-lying fields and when these sources dry up, they have to walk a long distance to the nearest tube-well point.

Chitapedi has been declared a water scarcity panchayat many times at the Nuagaon Panchayat Samiti meetings but no permanent solutions have been put in place to alleviate the drudgery of the villagers.
Sources said efforts are underway for a piped water supply project in Chitapedia gram panchayat headquarters but it won’t cover many remote pockets. A new solar-based water supply system at Ganjhutola in Pital village is non-operational due to technical issues while another such system at Luaram village has been lying defunct since two years. The people of Ganjhutola thus are forced to collect contaminated water by digging holes on the dry bed of a natural stream.

Former Zilla Parishad member of Nuagaon, Pappu Sahu said following Jan Sampark Abhiyan by the administration, some drinking water projects including installation of tube wells, digging of wells and solar based water supply were taken up in the affected pockets. However, the areas bordering Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district were left out. Remote pockets of Arahasa, Paniasal, Gainjor, Kudahudang and Kulabeda also face a similar situation.

Sahu said due to non-motorable roads and geographical barriers, vehicle-mounted tube well or deep bore-well drilling machines fail to reach the areas.

Contractors were assigned to sink tube-wells or deep bore-wells in accessible areas but that are of little help. Proper mapping of the affected pockets, removal of geographical barriers and sincere efforts of the Nuagaon block administration can help tide over the situation, he said