Eco-friendly water storage project 'falls prey' to politics

Kulwinder Sandhu

Tribune News Service

Nihalsinghwala (Moga), August 26

Nihalsinghwala town, situated 45 km from the Moga district headquarters, is facing the problem of waterlogging in the ongoing monsoon. Even the main market gets inundated in the absence of any effective drainage system.

Local people allege that in the mandi area, the drainage had been clogged by a few residents living on the other side, claiming that if the water flows out of the mandi, it would enter their houses.

The president of Nagar Council, Inderjit Singh Jolly, said he had started a project to lay storm water pipelines to drain out rainwater from the market area and store it in the nearby ponds for use during dry seasons but some people backed by the local Congress and Akali leadership had forcibly stopped the work. They broke the pipelines and filled it with sand.

“The Nagar Council desired to adopt an eco-friendly method to store storm water in ponds and use it during the dry days by laying a special pipeline but it is unfortunate that this project has fallen prey to the local politics,” Jolly said.

He said the executive officer of the Nagar Council had given a written complaint to the local police against those persons who had interrupted the official work, but the police did not register a case.

He said the construction work had been stopped to avoid any untoward incident. “The district administration is not providing us the security required to complete the work, which can be easily completed in less than a week,” he said.

"The civic body has also planned to construct a few more drains to ease out the problems of waterlogging in various other localities of the town and use ponds as dams for the storage of storm water. It will give relief to people during rains every year,” he added.

The central water commission had declared Nihalsinghwala block as "dark zone" due to fast depletion of groundwater in the last two decades. Experts had suggested that eco-friendly techniques should be adopted to store rainwater by constructing dams and using it for agriculture and construction purposes.