Repair continues, so do people’s woes : The Tribune India

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Repair continues, so do people’s woes

BATHINDA: The repair work to plug in the breach in the water channel going from Sirhind Canal to Shergarh continued today.

Repair continues, so do people’s woes

Labourers fill the breach of a distributary channel of the canal near Sai Nagar in Bathinda on Saturday. Tribune photos: Pawan Sharma



Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, May 27

The repair work to plug in the breach in the water channel going from Sirhind Canal to Shergarh continued today.

Even the condition of the sullage carrier deteriorated. Municipal Corporation Bathinda (MCB) officials are working to plug in the breach by putting sand bags on the banks of the sullage carrier.

The motors of the carrier were also stopped. With this, 80 lakh gallons of water, which goes into the sewerage pipes daily, was saved but it flooded half of the city. The MCB has also stopped the water supply from the past two days, leaving the city as well as 35 villages without water.

MCB XEN Kishore Bansal, SDO Raman Kumar, Rajinder Kumar and Sukhmander said the sullage carrier breach would be repaired in 24 hours. The administration is trying to repair the breach area and release the water at the earliest, but the 15-km stretch of water channel from Bibiwala to Phulokheri is in a bad condition and with the flow of water increasing in the channel, it can get damaged again. Even the Irrigation Department and the district administration are aware of this, but they are not acting due to paucity of funds.

Huge funds are required for the repair work of the canal and water channels but the Irrigation Department does not have any money and even the state government is facing an economic crisis. As a result, the repair work will be done till September 2017, sources said.

The coming monsoon is also very critical for the over 5 lakh population living near the Sirhind Canal as there are 60 danger points, 17 bridges in bad condition and nine small routes on the canal.

Phulokheri villager Jaswinder Singh said the breach in the water channel has been reported two-three times earlier as well and the villagers do repair work on their own. Earlier, more than 1,000 sand bags had been put up on the banks of the water channel.

It is pertinent to mention that before the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, then Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had laid the foundation of the side lining of the Sirhind Canal, but work on the same has failed to start till date. The Department had made an estimate and sent it further many times but till date no funds have been released for the project.

In December 2016, the SAD-BJP government released Rs 3 crore but there was no information regarding where the fund was to be utilised.

After the breach in the water channel and sullage carrier, SDM Sakshi Sahwney, Tehsildar Sukhdev Singh Brar and Naib Tehsildar Lakhbir Singh took stock of the houses and the loss suffered. There are 80 houses in the area which have been affected due to the waterlogging and 35 houses have suffered damage.

Sukhwinder Kaur and Amarjit Kaur, residents of the area, said they had taken loan from a bank for the construction of their house which had got damaged again. They demanded that the district administration should support them and help them out in the situation.

SDM Sakshi Sahwney said they had told people that if they wanted, they could be shift, along with their material, to other safe places. But the residents had refused. They had already started assessing the loss due to the breach, she added.

Another breach in sullage carrier 

Another lapse on the part of officials was witnessed on Saturday as a 20-feet breach was observed in the sullage carrier after officials hurriedly released water into the carrier and heavy pressure led to the breach from the same point again. Mayor Balwant Rai Nath said the breach had been caused in the sullage carrier from the same point again and it seemed that water had been released into it hurriedly. Water supply into the canal had been stopped and all the motors and disposal outlets had been closed in the city, he added.

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