As the mercury is going up and up daily in the district underground water level is going down and down, resulting water crisis in both urban and rural areas. According to our sources underground water level has went down to alarming below 40 feet level in entire district so the PHED department has decided to not install any new hand-pump in the district this year except in the identified focus areas.
A PHED officer said that the underground water level of the district is going down and down every year and this year as per our sample survey it has reached to a level which is alarming. The cause of this crisis is known to everyone but no one is taking care yet. The citizens are wasting water on one side and on the other side they have not installed rain water harvesting system in their houses. Even the government buildings are not equipped with this system which is a matter of distress.
The executive engineer of PHED Pramod Kumar said that the underground water is actually fixed deposit for us but we are only spending it and not thinking to add new amount in this deposit. In this condition how long we will survive it is a question on which everyone will have to think upon.
He confirmed that due to the alarming situation of underground water level this year the department is not going to install any new hand-pump. However he added that some focus areas will be treated as exception and these focus areas will be those where there is no hand-pump till date.
Sharing the data he said that there are 21209 hand-pumps in the district out of which about 4000 are not working. Majority of these non-working hand-pumps need change of router riser pipe, for which tender has already been floated. Soon it will be finalised and more than 3000 non-working hand-pumps will start giving water. Rest non-working hand-pumps will be repaired soon as repairing work is going on in the district at war level.
Talking about the water crisis in both urban and rural areas of the district engineer Kumar said that the government is providing us everything to beat the challenge but it is the duty of the citizens to start saving water right now otherwise they will have to suffer either this year or in the years to come.