Jahangeer Ganaie
Tral, Nov 17: The residents of Arigam village of Tral hamlet of South Kashmir’s Pulwama district have accused the public health engineer department of supplying contaminated water.
Locals said that they are getting water directly from the local water scheme without any filtration due to which the water they get is highly contaminated.
Locals said that a new scheme in the area was started three years ago but it is nowhere on the ground.
Ishfaq Ahmad, a local resident, said that they are forced to drink contaminated water and walk many kilometers to fetch water from a spring from main town Tral.
He said that they have brought this issue in notice of higher ups several times but to no avail.
Locals requested concerned authorities to look into the matter at an earliest and take immediate steps for providing potable water to the area.
An official of the department, while acknowledging that there is a shortage of potable drinking water in the area, said that the new scheme was approved three years ago.
“Initially nobody provided land for the new scheme and later when land was identified and a well was dug, it collapsed,” an official said. “The process of identifying land for the new scheme is going on and within days it will be sorted out after that work will be started on the new scheme.”
