Families in Delhi desert village due to scarcity of water

About 50-odd families have reportedly been forced to move out of Outer Delhi’s Ghummenheda village due to severe scarcity of drinking water for the past decade. On an average, four to five families have been shifting out of the village every year.

Despite the AAP government’s claim that it is providing 20,000 litres of drinking water free of cost to each household every month, the Delhi Jal Board is said to be sending just one 9,000-litre water tanker to the village every week. Though each household has been provided with piped water connection in the area, a large number of villagers have been battling to receive regular supply of drinking water in the simmering heat.

Only houses on the frontal side of the village are lucky enough to receive piped drinking water on a regular basis. The houses in the middle and at the tail end of the village have reportedly not been receiving regular supply of drinking water for about a decade.

The drinking water to the village is supplied from a nearby DDA command tank and Daulatpur reservoir, whose total capacity is 2 million gallons a day. However, the water supplied from the two sources just reaches the households at the frontal side of the village. And the people living in the houses at the tail end of the village don’t even remember when they had received regular supply of water during the daylight.

A majority of the villagers have been using borewell water for cleaning and washing utensils and clothes. Only a few well-to-do families have got private pipelines fixed to get piped drinking water. “I had to lay a 1,000-metre pipeline at my own expense to get piped water in my house,” a villager said.

On the other hand, AAP MLA Gulab Singh, who belongs to the same village, denied that there was any water crisis in the area. “Some people are politicising the issue. The situation has drastically improved after the AAP government came to power in Delhi.”

Mr Singh said that no villager had so far complained to him about the water problem. “Had any person approached me, I would have ensured supply of 10 water tankers to the village every day.”

Admitting that Ghummenheda has been facing acute shortage of water, a senior DJB officer said that the village is located at the tail end of the distribution network and a new pipeline is being laid to address the problem. He said it would take the DJB some time to solve the problem.

Mr Singh said the villagers have been crying for water for the last 10 years and the situation has been worsening with each day. “Fifty families have migrated from this village in the past several years. In the coming days, more families may also move out of the village. On an average, four to five families migrate every year from our village. Some villagers have even moved from middle of the village to frontal row to get drinking water.”

Delhi Pradesh Congress president Ajay Maken said the village was just one example of the AAP government’s failure to address the issue of drinking water supply. He accused chief minister Arvind Kejriwal of playing politics over the water problem.

“We are getting 1,200 cusecs of water from Western and Munak canals. Our chief minister wants to send water we are getting from Haryana to Latur by the railways. But he is not sending water to areas which need it the most in Delhi.”