After several deaths of innocent children in different parts of State, the Government has issued guidelines meant to stop people dying in dovas. The Government has come up with certain methods, which according to the departments concerned would help a lot in keeping accidents away. As per guidelines, a plantation drive around dovas is expected soon, said MGNREGA Commissioner Siddharth Tripathi.
“Plantation would hold soil around dova firmly, keeping it not to get filled into dova itself in case of heavy rain. It will also be helpful at the time someone slides into a dova, as he/she can hold it and will not get drown,” he said. Tripathi said that fencing of dovas or covering them with net could also be a good idea, and departments were working on that.
About 175,000 dovas have been dug up by two government departments so far for conservation of rain water during monsoon. According to government data, some 3.5 crore gallons of additional water has been conserved in ongoing monsoon itself, which could feed a reasonable amount of irrigation needs. But faulty design of hundreds of dovas dug majorly by irrigation department has claimed more than a dozen lives so far.
“We are trying our best to stop these accidents to occur. We have asked DCs to call a meeting of BDOs and other officials to find out every possible solution. We believe that putting a red flag near accident prone dovas would be a good idea,” said an official in the Irrigation Department.
Officials believe that educating people would also be a good idea, which is why a guideline regarding the same has also been issued and a number of districts have already started following it. “A serious educational programme is deeply needed to save children from getting into dovas. We have observed that most of the kids who died in dovas ventured into just for bathing. Many a times they did it while returning from schools. Sometimes they had come only to play in dovas with their friends. We have started programmes to educate children to stay away from dovas,” Garhwa DC Neha Arora said.