PHE Deptt Kishtwar ensures adequate water supply during, post-lockdown

Kishtwar: The challenge of making provision of adequate water supply in this water scarce district during and post lockdown was ably met, thanks to the extra efforts put in by the PHE department.
The department managed the smooth supply of the water for common masses as the pandemic necessitated the same to maintain the physical hygiene by frequent hand washing and cleanliness of daily usage items like clothes and mask etc.
The Department also made all the necessary arrangements for supply of clean and fresh drinking water to minimize the chances of spread of other water borne diseases, which could become the easy susceptibility to the COVID infection.
“March and April months in this area witness torrential rains and it was a challenging task for the department to ensure the uninterrupted supply of water as damage to the gravity lines passing through the forest and rocky areas due to landslide becomes inevitable,” said Xen PHE Kishtwar N K Gupta.
For this reason, the water tanker arrangements were made for maintaining supply to the shortage prone areas such as main town and adjoining areas of town, he said. In addition to it about, 200 tankers of water were supplied to the quarantine centers during the lockdown to augment the regular supply.
To overcome problem of shortage of workforce, field functionaries were camped near the work places and the movement passes were issued to ensure the uninterrupted execution of essential repairment works.
With the start of Unlock measures in the district, the department has restarted work on different schemes including mega projects under Jal Jivaan Mission in Block Drabshalla ,Trigam and Thakrie along with the prestigious Naigarh WSS project and other under languishing project.
As per the department, besides these, 20 languishing works have been resumed with an expeditious pace with due observance of precautionary measures to bring the tangible results at the gross root level in a time bound manner.
Under Back to village programme, 51 works costing Rs 2.53 crore were taken up in the year 2019 and majority of them have been completed in a stipulated time. The remaining few works are either in progress or being started soon. The left out works of B2V phase first and New works under B2V phase 2 have been restarted and are likely to be completed in a time bound to ensure efficient and effective supply of water across the district.
To ensure adequate water supply to the educational institutions ahead of their opening, 109 schools have been identified across the district without tape water, for providing water connections on priority.