With incessant rains affecting basic services like drinking water supply badly, not a single tube-well has yet been equipped with stabiliser to ensure smooth supply of drinking water and to protect the same from the problem of voltage fluctuation in Haldwani.
There are 70 tube-wells in Haldwani, catering to drinking and irrigation requirements of a large section of the people. Keeping this in view, proposals were sent by Jal Sansthan Haldwani to the State Government to have 30 out of 70 tube-wells equipped with stabilisers. But till now clearance for having just six tube-wells equipped with stabilisers has been granted.
“We have got approval for equipping six tube-wells with stabilizers,” said a Jal Sansthan official based in Haldwani.
However, all contingency plans like acquisition of stabilisers should have been put in place much earlier, well before summer set in. But things are grim on the ground with the Jal Sansthan officials having received approval to equip six tube wells with stabilisers, regretted the citizens who are facing acute drinking water scarcity for days.
It is a must to have the tube-wells equipped with stabilizers, given fluctuating voltage because Haldwani is heavily dependent on electricity-driven tube-wells to meet drinking water needs.
Poor drinking water distribution system is leading to the water crisis here. Haldwani should ideally have no such crisis with Gaula river being the main source of drinking water here. The authority concerned being ill- prepared for any contingency is making the people suffer, the refrain goes.
Despite Jal Sansthan sending water tankers to the affected areas, these alternative arrangements are not enough to deal with the drinking water crisis.