Women hit streets in Bandipora village over lack of drinking water

Bandipora, Oct 18: Women from Saderkoot Bala village in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district staged a protest on Wednesday over the lack of potable water for months.

Traveling several kilometers to the administrative center of Sumbal the protesters, mostly women, said they wanted to draw the attention of higher officials to their plight, as their repeated pleas to local authorities had gone unheard.

“We haven’t seen a drop of water running from our taps for over two to three months,” said Maimoon Begum, an elderly woman from the group of women protesters who were mostly elderly.

“Be it rain or cold, we have to struggle to fetch water. Most of the time we fetch water from people in the neighbourhood who have wells, but our constant presence annoys them,” she added.

She said they were old and fetching water felt hectic. “What if we fall and hurt ourselves in the process? The government must pay heed and provide us with water supply.”

The villagers said there was a problem with the water supply due to a lack of a proper pipe network. They also said a public bore well inside the village was not meeting the demand and was useless without a centrifugal pump.

To compensate for the water scarcity, the villagers said the department was sending water tankers intermittently, but “a single water tanker” was not enough as it did not reach most or half of the villagers.

“God is witness to how we are suffering,” another elderly woman said, breaking into tears. “We don’t see a drop of water running through our taps to drink.”

The women said lack of potable water was a headache and that they faced issues with it before too.

The villagers appealed to the deputy commissioner of Bandipora and the executive engineer of the Jal Shakti department, to provide them with water pipes and a water pump to solve their water supply issue.