Roof of water tank collapses one month back
Excelsior Correspondent
SAMBA, Dec 7: With the Collapse of roof of Water Tank of Tube Well Number 2 in Samba 700 houses in the town are forced to drink contaminated water.
As per reports about a month ago some part of the roof of this water tank had collapsed and on Wednesday another part of it collapsed with the result water in the tank gets contaminated due to falling of insects, flies, dust etc in it. The same contaminated water is supplied to residents of the area. The Departmental officials who are on duty themselves witness it and also the local people had informed the Department officials from time to time demanding laying of slab over the water tank to save the people from being infected after drinking the contaminated water but till date they failed to do the needful.
The irate people of the area said that the Government is claiming to provide clean and hygienic drinking water to every house hold through “Har Ghar Nal”, all of them prove to be hollow when it comes to Samba. On Thursday, the Department came into action and several officers including Jal Shakti Department, Executive Engineer, Sandeep Gupta, Assistant Executive Engineer, Farooq Ahmed and JE reached the spot and took stock of the situation.
The water tank releases one lakh gallons i.e. 5 lakhs liters of water every day and supplies the water to residents of Samba town, the residents added.
There are about four schools in this locality having a roll of 200 children and along with this water is supplied to about 700 houses from this water tank, they said.
The Jal Shakti Department should take cognizance of this soon so that the people are saved from drinking contaminated water which can lead to spread of epidemic said Dheeraj Guleria a local resident.
“We are drinking contaminated water for the last several months. In such a situation, action should be taken against the officers as to why they did not wake up from deep slumber to take cognizance of this” said Sunny Sambyal, district president, Jammu Kashmir Apni Party, Trade Union,. “This way the authorities of Jal Shakti were playing with the lives of people., We appeal to the Lieutenant Governor that some cognizance should be taken of this and Samba people should get clean water”, he added.
“As soon as we got information about this, we along with our officers reached the spot where we found that the water tank was many years old and it was in a dilapidated condition due to which its roof had collapsed,” said Sandeep Gupta, Executive Engineer, Jal Shakti Department Samba. “We instructed our officers that after getting it cleaned, cover it with plastic sheets as soon as possible and for the rest, we will prepare a project report for its repairs and send it to the higher authorities”.
“As soon as we get the approval, the work will be started,. Till the work is done, we will cover the tank by laying polythene to protect water from getting contaminated” Executive Engineer added.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
