Jammu region in general and city in particular are reeling under shortage of water supply at the height of the summer season when the temperature soars to 40 plus degree Celsius. Day in and day, out there is loud cacophony about water management and animated talk about providing drinking water to the city that would be more than the required amount. And when the tall claims fall through, there is no word from any official quarter about the plight of common people. Entire ground activity of water supply is handled by temporary employers/daily wagers of the PHE Department. Some of them have been rendering service for more than a decade and still they remain temporary. For last fifty days they are on strike as they want to be regularized, a demand which the Government is not prepared to accept. This is a very illogical and unreasonable situation. If the PHE is not in a position to regularize them even after they have put in service for more than a decade, and if they are on strike to force their demands on the Government, why does not Government dispense with their services and engage new temporary staff to handle water supply in the city and in Kandi areas which are more prone to hardships of shortage of water. If the Government thinks that dismissal of the temporary staff would be either fraught with repercussions or unjust, why does it not think of regularizing their services? This is a peoples’ Government; it has to work in the interests of the people. But what it actually is doing is working against the interests of the people by making millions of people suffer the hardships of shortage of water. Ministers, MLAs and top bureaucrats receive regular water supply and are not affected by the strike. So they cannot understand the crisis faced by millions of ordinary people.
It is nearly two years that the much trumpeted Rs 1008 cr mega Chenab water project for Greater Jammu meeting the demand of water for next 30 years, was turned down by the Asian Development Bank for some technical reasons. PHE Department says now it is contacting a Japanese company likely to take up the project. What has the department been doing for the intervening two years when the project plan was shelved by ADB? Was it not its responsibility not to waste a single minute and look for alternative? Now they have ordered digging of 19 tube wells and these have to be completed by December 2016. It means that till December or for seven moths still to go the shortage of 20 lakh gallons of water for Jammu city will continue. It is a school boys thinking that when the plan for Chenab water supply scheme was presented to the ADB, the State Government authorities should have also thought of an alternative source of fund raising which could have been put into practice immediately and by now it would have been fully functional. This shows lack of futuristic vision with our planners.
To be candid, the proposed 19 tube wells even if they come up by December are totally undependable for many reasons. First nobody can say how many of these are unable to have adequate water reserves for supplying to the people. Secondly, taking into account the dismal condition of power supply nobody will ensure regular power supply to these tube wells. And lastly, even if power supply is regular and the tube wells have sufficient water, what can be done with temporary workers/ labourers going on strike for months at end. Therefore the tube wells are no real solution to the problem. What about the large Kandi area in district Kathua and Rajouri? The Government has to cobble water resource management policy in right earnest now and not tomorrow. Water shortage in the city is becoming a very serious issue.
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