VARANASI: Rising early in the morning and waiting in a long queue near Rajghat seems to be the fate of Damyanti, a housewife who stands for long hours to fetch a bucketful of water. What hurts her even more is the fact that despite living near the banks of the Ganga, the area is slowly becoming water starved.
"We are fully dependent on handpumps, as most of the taps in the houses are running dry," she said, indicating the severe water crisis in the area. "Even, the quality of water supplied by Jal Sansthan raises eyebrows, leaving no other choice but to depend on nearly two dozen handpumps in the area," she added.
A number of residents in the area were also peeved with power roistering that begins in the early morning for two hours (5 am to 7 am), making it difficult for water pumps to work efficiently. "The condition remains the same at the beginning of the summer season and it gets aggravated with increasing intensity of sun light," said Ram Pratap, a septuagenarian resident of Prahlad ghat area.
"Most of the areas of the city, especially ghats (lying in old city areas such as Chowk and Godowlia), have been forced to witness water crisis due to change in power rostering," said AK Jaiswal, general manager, JS. "These areas are not only getting delayed water supply in the morning, but power rostering in the afternoon (3 pm to 5 pm) is also affecting water supply in the evening," he added.
It may be mentioned here that nearly 50 per cent of the water supply (280 million litres per day) is managed through 112 deep tube-wells and 45 per cent (125 MLD) is dependent on the Ganga. In addition, as many as 10 MLD (five per cent) of water is supplied through 1,559 hand pumps that include public as well as private ones.
The gravity of the situation could be also gauged from the fact that as many as 464 handpumps became defunct, requiring reboring last year. Despite making all efforts to ensure water supply through these handpumps, JS could still manage functioning of 425 handpumps that could be rebored.
In fact, a long stretch of ghats- from Rajghat to Trilochan Ghat- are witnessing similar situation and almost two dozen handpumps in the area have already become defunct, indicating difficult times ahead.
Water supply situation
Total water supplied: 280 MLD
Water loss due to leakages: 25 per cent
Water availability per capita per day: 150 litre
Length of water supply pipeline 577 kilometre
Sources of water supply
Ganga: 125 MLD (45 per cent)
Deep tube-wells: 145 MLD (50 per cent)
Handpumps: 10 MLD (5 per cent)
Total tube-wells: 112
Handpumps: 1,559
(As per report of Jal Sansthan, Varanasi)
