Choked water channel leaves locals high & dry in Hisar’s Sulkhani village

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, June 8

Government funds worth Rs 2.6 crore utilised in Sulkhani village under the Jal Jeevan Mission — a government scheme — to provide safe and adequate drinking water to all households in rural India, have failed to redress the water woes of the residents in Hisar district.

Groups of women can be daily seen carrying pitchers on their heads to fetch water from the hand pumps installed on the outskirts of the village for their household chores. Even menfolk bring water in tanks on the bullock carts for domestic use.

Salim Sulkhani, a social activist of the village, said the villagers had hoped that their perennial problem of potable water would end after the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Scheme. “But the things remain the same. The water channel which fetches water from Balsamand minor to the waterworks in the village remains choked or the water is diverted by farmers to their fields before it reaches the village. The three-km long channel is not being maintained, cleaned and guarded which is the root cause of water shortage in the village,” he said.

Seema Rani, a resident of the village, said they had to go to fetch water from the hand pumps located on the outskirts of the village. “We expected that these problems will come to an end soon after the Jal Jeevan scheme was implemented in the village. But things remain the same for us,” she said.

Geeta Rani, the village sarpanch, said they had raised the issue with the then Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala who visited the village in February this year. “But there seems to be no solution to the problem. The hyacinth and other trash get stuck in the water channel, which blocks the flow of water to the water tanks in the village,” she said. The sarpanch said the infrastructure had been created under the ‘Jal Jeevan’ scheme in the village, including a boosting station, two water tanks and water treatment technologies. But in the absence of water, these facilities are rendered useless,” she said.

The sarpanch added that a delegation of villagers met the officials of the Public Health Engineering Department and the officials had assured them that they would take measures to clean the water channel in the village.

A villager said on the 3-km stretch of the water channel, the farmers deliberately choked it and diverted the water to irrigate their fields.

However, Salim Sulkhani said with the heatwave sweeping the region, the village women were suffering as they had to fetch water on their heads from the outskirts of the village.

Kuldeep Kohar, Subdivisional Officer of the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), admitted that there had been a problem of choking of the water channel which had resulted in the shortage of water in the water tanks. However, he added that the water was being supplied to the village and it was decided that the entire stretch of the water channel would be cleaned.