Agartala: The Tripura government has decided to seek Centre’s support for creating sustainable water sources in 222 locations of the state during upcoming dry spell and asked the drinking water and sanitation (DWS) officials to take immediate steps to lift the water from outside.
With the report of water crisis and spread of water borne diseases in the remote and hilly parts of the state, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar reviewed the situation last evening with the officials concerned but the meeting was inconclusive.
According to report, because of difficult terrain and geographical isolation the state government has not been able to provide safe drinking water to the population, mostly tribal in those areas and every year water-borne diseases take its toll.
”As many as 37 deaths due to gastro-enteristis, malaria and viral disease have been reported last year and DWS had supplied water tanks over four months in those areas and the conditions are expected to be remained same this year too,” officials said, adding that DWS had already made necessary arrangement of supply water in tanks. Officials, however, underlined that the meeting had decided to seek both financial and technical support from Ministry of Water Resources to make a permanent solution of the crisis in the hill bound locations.
There was no scope to dig water source or manage supply of water from the nearby area and only the option available was to lift water from low lying water bodies, which had required a sizable amount of fund and machinery support, officials added.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Ratan Lal Nath blamed the state government for the situation and said that left front government had not mobilised sufficient package sanctioned by the Centre for tribal areas development. He lashed out at the state government for non-compliance the Rain Water Harvesting strategy in the state even thought Tripura have been blessed with about 80 percent more rainfall in past three years, which was led the state into water crisis. The Tripura government had engaged WAPCSO, a leading consultant of water issues in India to chalk out the modalities for structuring community rainwater harvesting arrangement. As many as 50 pockets at the main source of rivers were identified and natural water-falls to construct water reservoirs to catch rainwater in 2009 but it did not yield any result, Mr Nath added. (UNI)
