Solan reels under water crisis, depts pass buck

Ambika Sharma

Solan, July 2

The Solan town is facing severe water scarcity, with residents getting the supply after seven to nine days. The situation is worsening every day.

Even as Solan Deputy Commissioner Manmohan Sharma had convened a meeting of the officials of the Solan Municipal Corporation as well as the Jal Shakti Department (JSD), it has failed to improve the situation.

Huge shortfall

• 65 lakh litre water supplied by Jal Shakti Dept to Solan town on Monday
• 80 lakh litre daily water requirement of the town
• Water to the town is supplied by Jal Shakti Department (JSD) and distributed by the Municipal Corporation
• Civic body staff rue they receive water much less than the requirement
• The JSD employees blame chinks in the distribution system for the water scarcity

The town’s water is supplied by the JSD and is distributed by the civic body. However, the two have been at loggerheads and blaming each other for the water scarcity.

While the civic body staff rue they receive water much less than the requirement, the JSD staff blame the chinks in the distribution system as the reason behind the water scarcity.

Executive Engineer, Jal Shakti Department, Solan, Ashish Rana, said, “We are trying to supply the required quantity of water to the town, but the problem like silt in the upstream Giri river and certain issues related to power supply have been affecting the normal lifting of water. We are unable to lift the requisite quantity of water on a daily basis though we did supply 65 lakh litre of water yesterday.”

The town requires about 80 lakh litre of water on a daily basis to meet the demand of the burgeoning population. The supply was, however, reduced to as low as 45 to 67 lakh litre, which had forced the department to resort to water rationing in the last about a week. With leaking pipes leading to water wastage and the lack of adequate pumping machinery, the supply was further hit in the town. The residents were forced to purchase water from tankers.

“We are forced to buy water from tankers at least once a week. We also purchase bottled water for drinking due to lack of regular supply in the town,” said Sheetal, a homemaker.

The Jal Shakti Department supplies water directly to 60 per cent areas under the civic body comprising the merged areas like Rabon, Basal, Chambaghat, etc, while the Municipal Corporation distributes water in 40 per cent areas.

With the state government busy with the three Assembly byelections, the residents were left to fend for themselves.

The district administration remained a mute spectator to the ordeal the residents are going through as they brushed aside their responsibility by merely convening a meeting, which did little to resolve the problem.