When wells ran dry in the ongoing summer, Rebati Munda (34) of lembu village under Sukinda block in Jajpur district had two options. She could spend all day carrying buckets of water on her head from a village a km away or she could queue all day to get polluted water from a village tube-well. Either way she and her family members only got dirty water. “Children suffer from diseases because the water we drink every summer happens to be unclean,” Munda said.
The tribal villages of Sukinda walk miles to get potable water every year during summer. And it is the women of these areas, because of their traditional role as water collectors for their families, who suffer the most. “In Kaliapani village, I shall never forget what I saw,” said Tikan Jena, a teacher. “Women were walking one to two km to get drinking water as all the two tube wells of their village were not working in the last two years. They were carrying water pot of 3kg weight on their heads and fetching water at least three times a day under scorching heat with very little shade. They were walking to find water that’s not even clean,” she added.
About 50,000 tribals of 45 villages of Sukinda block lack access to safe water and often have no choice but to drink water from polluted sources such as unprotected wells and ponds. In most of the villages near the hillocks, residents send their family members to fetch drinking water early in the morning from a few functioning tube-wells by walking about one to two km.
Children are made to stand in serpentine queues right from the morning to fetch water due to heavy rushes near the tube-wells. Many also drink polluted water after collecting it from ponds, ditches and other water bodies. Though the district administration has given instructions to the officials to press private water tanks into service and repair the defunct tube-wells in order to ensure drinking water supply, the order is yet to be implemented, said trade union leader Suresh Kumar Haibru.
It is not that the district administration is callous to peoples’ need. But the concerned department is only paying lip services to the order of the district administration for which the locals are being forced to suffer, asserted Haibru. During the last general elections, sundry political parties had assured to solve water crisis in the seaside areas, but they failed to keep their promises after the end of the polls. As a result, the sorry plight of the locals is yet to abate, alleged Haibru.
When contacted, the Sukinda BDO said, “The authority has directed the officials of RWSS Department to repair all the tube-wells and supply water in tankers in many remote areas.”