Reeling under power outages, region now battles water crisis

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 25

Power curtailment has added to the woes of locals, with the city now facing drinking water shortage for the last 48 hours as the electricity supply to the filtration plants and lifting stations run by the public health engineering (PHE) department has not been restored.

With the mercury crossing 40°C, lakhs of people across the Jammu region have been left at the mercy of sweltering heat by the PDP-BJP government while the officials of the PHE department and power development department are blaming each other for the prevailing crisis.

The situation is worse in 71 wards under the Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC), comprising a population of 7 lakh people, where the households are connected with piped water. The situation is no better in the other towns of the region, where a majority of the people getting supply through piped connections are facing hardships.

“This has now become a routine. We have lost faith in the elected representatives and the government. We don’t know the reason for the present crisis, but there seems to be no accountability on part of government officials,” said Narinder Jamwal, a resident of Rehari colony.

The total water requirement of Jammu is 65.10 million gallons per day (MGD), but only 50 MGD is available from various sources, which include the Tawi and underground aquifers. Hundreds of megawatt of electricity is used to lift the water.

However, during the past one week, the entire state is facing acute water crisis as the power development department had failed to clear Rs 450-crore pending dues of the northern grid.

“We were already facing unscheduled power cuts and now, the water crisis. There is no water supply since Thursday. What is the administration doing with the people of Jammu, who are being neglected in every sphere?” asked Chetan Sharma, a resident of Upper Roop Nagar.

When contacted, Chief Engineer, PHE department, AK Gandotra said, “The water distribution system runs on power supply. Since the supply has been disrupted for the last two days, the machinery is not being utilised to its maximum capacity. The problem will persist for a couple of days.”

The PHE department, on the other hand, circulated a notification, blaming ‘power interruption’ for its failure to ensure supply in the areas falling under the jurisdiction of the PHE City Division No. 1 and PHE City Division No. 2.