John Wilbert & Sarthak Kanjilall
Port Blair, May 05: The water crisis has become even more severe than presently crisis for many people in South Andaman area as water curtailment has forced them to virtually run from pillar to post even for a single bucket of water. As per APWD the condition may even worsen as the Dhanikhari Dam presently has water only for one more month.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha, Mr. Sukhvinder Singh, Assistant Engineer, Dhannikhari Dam said that the present depth of water in the Dhanikhari Dam suggests that the Dam can cater water for only month.
“Earlier the supply from the dam was 29 Millions liters of water per day which was reduced to 50% by the first week of April and currently, the supply is reduced to 60% and it is expected that in the coming days due to the decrease in the depth, the water supply will be reduced to 10% more,” the Assistant Engineer said.
Mr. Singh further said that currently, the supply of water from the dam is 12 million liters per day, and every day APWD is pumping in around 02 million liters of water from Ponghi Balu where the water is transshipped from Rutland.
“We are planning to transship water from the Rut Land in the night as well to pump in more water in the Dhanikhari dam,” said Mr. Singh.
Presently, people who can afford are now booking water tankers and are filling the underground water tanks but those who are poor and can’t afford water tankers are the worst hit.
Good news is that Andaman and Nicobar Islands have received monsoon right on time in most of the cases in the month of May in past, and if it start raining in last week of May, the water problem will be gone atleast for next 9 to 10 months.
People then can focus on COVID19 fight again and APWD can keep the files related to water projects back in cold storage for next year.
