John Wilbert &Vikramaditya
Baratang, Jan 06: Baratang region, the entry point of Middle Andaman, faces a severe water crisis every year. Many houses in the region still lack tap water connections and many other villages do not have any arrangement for supply of drinking water.
As the area is vast and there are many encroachment pockets located very far from water sources putting all the blame on Administration is not fair but there is a need to plan laying of pipelines to the remote villages from now so that in next few years people of these villages can get fresh water through pipelines.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha the Zilla Parishad Member of Baratang region Mr. R Alagerswami said that many remote village households still rely on public taps or piped water from neighbouring villages or local raw water from nallah and ponds. This raises serious concern over the safety, sanitation, hygiene of people, especially women of the region.
When contacted Mrs. Sumari Roy the Pradhan of Nilambur Gram Panchayat said that in the last couple of years they tried many times to take up this issue with the administration but nothing positive happened. She added that during the summer season a large area of Baratang region faces a severe water crisis, when these villages face a lot of problems in getting water from tap of other villages. In many cases villagers are forced to use water from nearby Nallah, which is unsafe.
Mr. R Alagerswami demanded that a special team of Revenue Department and APWD must be sent to Baratang to carry out a ground level survey so that Administration can understand the gravity of this situation, where many villagers are struggling daily to get drinking water.
