It’s been a wild goose chase for the people of Tikrapada to have a tube-well from the district administration. They are forced to depend for water on a small shallow well dug in a dried stream bed two km away from the village.
Tikrapada is located at a distance of 12 km from the district Collector’s office at Nuapada. The hamlet has a population of 55 in 10 houses. The people are the landless displaced persons of Jonk Irrigation project who were shifted to a higher place to resettle when their village was submerged in the dam water in the year 1995. “We, the landless families of Tikrapada, got very little amount of money as rehabilitation assistance, which did not allow us to purchase land in other villages. So we decided to settle here and eke out our living on fishing in the dam” said the villagers.
Basic Government facilities like nutrition, health and employment programmes are not available here. The only source of water for the villagers here during rainy season is the water of the dam. However, on the arrival of summer, the water recedes to a distance of more than 3 km from the village, forcing the people to dig a small hole on the stream bed to draw drinking water. “That is the only place where water is available” said the villagers. The women go there four to five times every day to fetch drinking water. “It takes half an hour to bring a pot of water from that well,” said Samari Majhi. The well what they call is actually a small trench of three feet depth, open to all types of contamination. “The cattle and the dogs also drink water from that well,” added Samari.
To get rid of such situation, the villagers had first approached to the Gram Panchayat office for a tube well two years back, but there appeal did not yield any fruit. The Gram Panchayat officials said that it was the responsibility of the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) department to sink a tube well. Thus the people visited the RWSS office in April this year. They met the community organiser there, who assured that, the work would be done. The villagers returned with a hope that their wish would be fulfilled. “A month passed but there was no sign of arriving of the rig machine, so we went to the office again. This time the official advised us to meet his higher authority,” revealed the villagers.
The people met the Sub-divisional Officer (SDO) of the department, who promised that the tube well would be installed immediately. However, when the villagers asked the SDO after three days over the phone, he advised them to meet the contractor. The people met the contractor and knew that, he was unwilling to take the machine to the village as the road was not good.
The contractor asked the villagers to approach the block office for repair of the road. The villagers knew that approaching block office would not yield any result, so they themselves repaired the 6 km stretch road from Pethiapali to Tikrapada and contacted the contractor again. This time, the machine owner said that the rig machine was not working and would require at least 3 weeks for repair.
The villagers informed the Collector for the tube well. “If the work is not done even after we informed the Collector, then it may be said that, the district head is also helpless,” said the villagers. “Once it rained, the road would be submerged under the dam water again. In spite of the people’s endeavour to take the burden of repairing the road, their hope to get a tube well in the village remained unfulfilled,” said Mahendra Bag of an NGO called SAI.