Several areas of Srinagar are facing acute shortage of drinking water from past few days.
Representatives from Srinagar’s southern and eastern partssaid that most of the city areas are doubly vulnerable to the Covid-19 spreaddue to frequent outages of drinking water that is preventing people from theWHO-guided handwash protocol. Even as the authorities at Public HealthEngineering department maintain that the damaged distribution system is beingfixed, the consumers across Srinagar find it difficult to maintain requisitehygiene amid the mounting Covid-19 threat.
“WHO says frequent handwash, each time at least for 20seconds is the key safety practice but we don’t have water to drink or cook letalone washing hands or cleaning surfaces frequently,” says Tabindah Anjum Khan,a student from Minto Circle Colony at Alucha Bagh.
A delegation of residents from Soura’s Doctors’ Lane told GreaterKashmir that they have even written to the Prime Minister’s Office from wheredirections were issued to the administration for mitigating the problem. “But we saw no action on ground. NowI am moving court with the plea that despite spending huge funds in recentyears for commissioning new schemes and augmenting the old ones, people stillsuffer from shortage. In present times, the water crisis is a life threat butthe authorities don’t pay any heed,” says Abdul Qayoom Shah, community leaderfrom Doctors’ Lane. He said arepresentation about the whole issue was submitted before the DivisionalCommissioner P K Pole on the first day of his joining the office. “We are seekingcentral government’s intervention because the water outage is huge risk intimes of struggle against Covid-19,” Shah further says.
When contacted Chief Engineer PHE Abdul Wahid admitted thatthe water supply in the city has suffered few times since December last year.”But our people are working on ground. There was an issue at Malshahi Baghwhere the irrigation canal had breached and damaged our network but we havefixed it. Now the Sukhnag waster supply scheme developed snag in thecirculation pipes but that too has been taken care of. Where there is problemwe are sending tankers.”
“At a time when sanitation is a national mission and primeminister himself campaigns for it, and also at a time when a simple hand washis the key safety measure against Covid-19, the authorities here are lying throughtheir teeth,” says Abid Ahmad, an architect from Bemina area.