46.7% rural households sans potable water

Karam Prakash
Tribune News Service
Patiala, August 9

Potable water is still a dream for 46.72 per cent households of rural Punjab even after 46 years when the state launched rural water supply scheme with the help of national rural drinking water programme (NRDWP) in 1972.

Currently, there are 33,01,599 households in rural areas of the state and only 17,59,212 are being provided drinking water through pipeline, according to the Department of Water Supply and Sanitation (DWSS).

However, in 2018-19 the DWSS provided around 1 lakh water connections to the countryside, but 15.4 lakh rural households in the state still, don’t have access to safe drinking water.

Out of 22 districts in the state, Gurdaspur and Ferozepur districts have been the worst-hit, where only 23.47 and 24.78 per cent rural households, respectively, are connected with pipelines. Rupnagar district has the highest number of rural households that has access to drinking water supply. Out of 94,400 rural households, 79,822 (87.79 per cent) have access to safe drinking water through pipeline.

Surprisingly, the department has claimed to have already laid the water pipe network in 80 per cent of the rural habitations of the state, but, in effect, only 50 per cent of rural households have a potable water supply.

In 2014, the state government had introduced “Punjab State Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Policy 2014” aiming to provide potable water through 24x7 piped and metered individual connections. However, even after five years, the government has not been able to properly implement the policy.

Due to absence of potable water supply, the rural households have been extracting groundwater through submersible water pumps – posing a threat to the groundwater level. In fact, Punjab ranks the highest, in the country, for over-exploitation of groundwater.

The officials claimed that one of the major factors of failure to cover rural households was high dependency on individual’s private water sources like submersible pumps. Moreover, villagers didn’t want to pay for water connections and bills, said the officials. Contrarily, villagers claimed that the reasons for not using piped water were intermittent water supply and lack of maintenance by the officials. Manish Mehta of Bathonia Khurd village in Patiala district said a majority of people use submersible pumps for easy accessibility and free electricity to run water pumps. He said, “Water supply officials never come to villages to check unauthorised water connections. People fear water contamination in piped supply owing to leakages.”

Health threat

Every year, the state witnesses waterborne diseases, leaving hundreds ill. In June, diarrhoea outbreak at Bathonian Khurd village in the Rajpura block left two people dead and over 100 ill. SK Jain, Chief Engineer, DWSS, said the department would be able to cover the remaining rural households by March 2022. He said, “We have a target to cover each rural household by March 2022. Currently, 140 villages are getting round-the-clock water supply. We have minimum charges for the water connection depending upon the soil and area of the state which sometimes villagers are reluctant to pay.”