Not a drop of water has flowed from them since Thursday, a day after the main water pipeline that serves the two talukas got buried and broken under a landslide. Six days later, the pipeline is still being repaired, the government unable to meet its own deadlines of resuming water supply. The earliest the water supply to the two talukas was expected to be restored was Monday evening, and then it was advanced to Tuesday evening, with the hope that it could possibly get repaired by that morning.
It hasn’t yet, and till late Tuesday night the only sound coming from the taps was of the air escaping when the faucet was turned on. The new deadline is Wednesday evening, but given the manner in which the dates have been extended, nobody is taking this as the time by when the water supply will be restored.
In the meantime, the people of the two talukas have been suffering. The only alternative arrangements that the administration was capable of making in this sudden and unexpected crisis was supplying water through tankers. But then, Ponda and Tiswadi are pretty large talukas, with urban and rural areas that are densely populated, and reaching to every corner of these has proved to be an impossible task for the Public Works Department tankers. As a result people have had to depend on private water tankers whose source of water is unknown, and drawing water from wells, some of which have remained unused for a substantial period of time. Also unfortunately, just as this happened the rain clouds also took a break, keeping the area absolutely dry.
Yes, the administration has failed in being of aid to the people in the time of a crisis. Bureaucrats saw to it that their private water tanks were topped up, while the ordinary citizen stood with buckets, pots and pans hopeful that the tanker supplying free water would make a stop in the neighbourhood and they would be able to collect water that could be rationed out among the family members until the next tanker came. Sometimes the tanker came, sometimes it didn’t. There was a lack of co-ordination in the tanker supply of water, with the tankers rushing to areas from where they were getting distress calls, sometimes supplying to the same area, leaving others out.
This is not just a failure of the government, but also of the opposition that has only condemned the authorities for the delay in repairing the pipeline and restoring the water supply. The political parties – all and not just the opposition – could have been of better service had their workers stepped out and helped in making arrangements for the water tankers to reach all areas where the supply has been stopped. The lack of coordination that was displayed could have been straightened out to some extent, by the political party workers who have a grassroots knowledge and understanding of the situation that government officials do not have. They could well have played a major role in alleviating the tribulations of the people.
As Ponda and Tiswadi enter the seventh day without piped water supply, frustration has been creeping in among the people. Not just residences, but schools, restaurants, offices, government buildings are suffering from the disruption in water supply. In recent times this is probably the longest that any taluka has gone without water in the State. In this case, the taluka includes the State capital, which is expected to have better service than the rural areas. The administration has been unable to do that, this literally was a task whose deadline has been stuck in a pipeline. It has to be marked as a failure against the State government.
