Borewells fail to serve purpose

workers repairing a defunct borewell 

The indiscriminate digging up borewells has failed to benefit the people this summer despite the government spending vast amounts of money on this exercise every summer.

The majority of borewells have gone dry, but they benefit the drilling rig machine contractors. Government officials have been sanctioning borewells, indiscriminately violating the norms of the WALTA Act-2002.

The success rate of getting water with digging a borewell is small, with the efforts mostly going waste or yield little water.

Officials concerned claims that they were supplying drinking water in tractors to 110 villages facing acute drinking water problem in the district. The RWS officials have taken few local agriculture wells on rent to supply drinking water to the people in the villages facing severe drinking water problem.     

“Digging borewells has become a boon for drilling rig machine contractors and local political leaders but there is no much benefit to the people who continue to suffer without water to drink,” he pointed out.

Digging of borewells is high in Nirmal division and that too in the mandals along the river Godavari. Recently, ministers promised the ZPTCs sanction of 20 borewells each mandal.

The majority of borewells dig up in the past become defunct with the minor repairs and due to drastic fall in the ground water table and some of the borewells giving some water after flushing. Some of the farmers digging up borewells in the Godavari river shore to give water to agriculture and use drinking water purposes.

There are many villages in Dilawarpur mandal where indiscriminate digging of borewells takes place every summer season, with some of the villagers digging up to a depth even of 400 feet deep to get water, but not succeeding as the ground water table has fallen drastically.

Atram Jalimsha, sarpanch of Pangidi village in Sirpur (U) mandal, said that the state government should focus on creating a permanent water source to meet the people’s drinking water needs instead of putting large sums of money into digging borewells. 

Rs 24 crore released under14th Finance Commission to the district, and the amount would be re-distributed to 866-gram panchayats in the district. The funds will be used to mitigate drinking water problem.

The RWS officials sent Rs 28 crore proposals to the state government to take measures including de-siltation of wells and flushing, cleaning borewells to ease the drinking water problem in the district.