Hoardings put up to highlight canal water shortage in Mahendragarh

Ravinder Saini

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Tribune News Service

Mahendragarh, June 1

A social organisation, Shri Sundaram Trust, has adopted a novel way of highlighting scarcity of irrigation water in the Satnali area by putting up hoardings on the banks of various canals passing through it.The hoardings bear interesting slogans to attract the attention of people and the district authorities.

“I am part of Haryana but have not received water for a long while the administration claims to provide the water at the tail-end: Satnali Canal”, and “Where is our share of water going. Madhogarh canal has not been getting water for the past six months,” are some of the slogans.

Actually, Satnali area is facing scarcity of irrigation water forcing the farmers to depend on groundwater for agriculture.

Dharambir, a farmer from Satnali, said the canals were dug up a long time ago but the water was supplied sometimes so the farmers got tubewell installed to meet the agriculture requirement while Sunil of Sohdi village said there was no use of canal without adequate supply of water.

Sandeep Malda, chairman, Shri Sundaram Trust, said he had to install the hoardings on not getting any positive response from the authorities about the redressal of irrigation water issue.

“The Satnali region has seven canals but none of these has been having water since a long time while the authorities make a false claim of ensuring water to tail-end villages,” said Malda, adding that he would keep raising the issue until it is resolved.

SK Yadav, Superintending Engineer (Irrigation), admitted that there was scarcity of canal water in the Satnali region stating that the water could not be supplied last month due to technical reasons otherwise the region had a schedule of eight days of supply in 32 days.

“Sincere efforts are being made to resolve the issue by chalking out a plan for rehabilitation of the canals. We are finding it difficult to get labourers under the MGNREGA scheme hence the process to get it done through contractors will be initiated soon,” said he, adding that the next supply of canal water in the Satnali area was scheduled on June 24.