Biplab Kr Dey
Tura, May 23: In another shocker coming from the PHE stable under the aegis of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in the state of Meghalaya, an embankment which had been completed close to two years ago has broken in half showing up the sub-standard work that was done.
The collapse of the embankment comes even as there was literally no water that was being held by the structure and no reports of any form of floods in the entire Garo Hills for more than 3 years now.
The matter of the dam being damaged due to substandard work being done was raised by the Chibinang unit of the GSU who after receiving complaints from the villagers paid a visit to the site to witness first-hand the damage that had been done.
The project in question is the under construction JJM project at Romgre under Dadenggre. The project is expected to benefit 249 households as per the data available on the dashboard for projects in the state. The dashboard also states that of the 249 households in the Romgre and Romgre Songgital, 219 households have been connected through Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) with only another 30 remaining to be connected.
Just going by the dashboard numbers, the per household cost of the project runs over Rs 20 lakhs
However from the site of the damage as well as reports by the NGO, not even one household has been connected through taps so the question of FHT connections to their houses is absolutely falsified data.
“You can see from the embankment itself that no pipelines have been drawn as yet so where did the connections to households suddenly come into the picture. The data is falsified by the department in question and begs the question, why,” felt unit president, Amit Marak.
What is even more interesting is the fact that the overall cost of the project is a whooping 50+ crores of which the contractor has been allowed to withdraw over 44 crores of the amount without literally doing no work to ensure the households were connected through FHTCs.
The state of Meghalaya as per the latest dashboard data for JJM has completed close to a whooping 78% of FHTCs with fully functional water supply. However going by the data on the ground, someone is definitely making a fool of residents of the state of Meghalaya through the falsification of data.
Earlier the department in many cases including major projects in Nekikona near Rajabala, Tikrikilla GWSS among others had data that was skewed beyond belief. This was put down to a data entry error. However despite the fact that the error was known to all, no attempts were made to correct the same. This only meant that the dashboard data and data on the ground remained never coincided to provide the actual facts. If you take just these 3 projects as samples, the skewed numbers in the end could be gargantuan.
What has also been alarming is the PHE department, which has been in charge of these projects, is the hesitancy to provide information, even under RTI on the tender process as well as the names of contractors.
Even in the case of the Romgre project, the SDO of Phulbari, under whom the project falls, did not bother replying to calls or messages sent to him, raising even more questions on the complicity of the department.
The icing on the cake is the fact that inspections done by a ‘third party’ of these projects, has raised more issues than answers is even more worrying for those who want to talk of water management and its development.
“The department has to take stock of what has taken place and we demand that an inquiry into what took place be undertaken. We only want that the people are given their due under the project. However a lot of what has taken place does not make sense and needs a larger enquiry. A dam cannot fall without any form of natural calamity without it being poorly constructed,” felt Marak on the matter.