Bandipora, July 15: Despite the tall claims of the Bandipora administration regarding providing pure tapped drinking water to the people falls flat as Nathpora locality- barely 2 kms away from Mini Secretariat Bandipora is without water supply from past many years and repeated pleas have fallen to deaf ears.
The residents of Budshah Mohallah in Ward No 14 of the town said they have been denied the water supply from past many years forcing them to fetch impure water from nearby stream.
They said though a pipeline was laid few years ago under some Water Supply Scheme (WSS) but the scheme proved to be a scam as it served no purpose on ground and no water could be provided to the residents.
Though money was drawn from state exchequer for the implementation of scheme and on papers the district administration presents the scheme as an achievement but the scheme has failed on ground as people are still without water supply.
Earlier this year the district administration conducted a survey of the district to identify the households without water supply. Out of total 45714 reported households, 31936 households (69.86 %) have functional tap water connection and 13778 households (30.13 %) are without tap water connection.
The census report reveals that a total number of 25625 (56.05 %) households are receiving water as per 55 Liters Per Capita Daily (LPCD) norms while as 20089 (43.94 %) households are not receiving the water as per prescribed norms.
The residents have outrightly rejected the census and said that the census has shown their village in connected households but in real the village is without water supply. They said the census has been conducted to hoodwink the higher authorities and hide the scam as money as been drawn from water supply schemes that have serve no purpose to the people.
Locals blamed bad planning by the engineers for lack of water supply as they alleged that a narrow pipeline was laid in the area that can’t pump water from source to the end user. They said it seems that the pipeline was laid just to draw money from state exchequer and hoodwink the higher authorities.
Locals appealed lieutenant Governor and Deputy Commissioner Bandipora to investigate the reasons of failure of the scheme and also appealed them to de-notify the village from the list of habitations receiving tapped water supply under Jal Jeevan Mission and also appealed to take immediate measures to restore the water supply.
Meanwhile, Executive Engineer Jal-Shakti division Bandipora, Abdul Khaliq Qureshi said that they have done most of the pending work there and in a few days, the people there will have access to drinking water.
