KARWAR: The Jal Jeevan Mission, an initiative of the Union government to provide clean drinking water to rural areas, has become a burden for the administration as well as villagers of Uttara Karnataka district and the pr0ject has been put on hold in over 60 villages.
Drawing water lines to remote, forested rural parts of the district is difficult as houses are situated far from each other, resulting in cost escalation. The district is densely populated along the coast, but in the Western Ghats, houses have a minimum of at least 1 km distance between them.
“Considering the geography of the region, we need to invest heavily on long pipelines. With the rise in petroleum product prices, the cost of PVC pipes too has gone up,” said an officer associated with the project.
Another officer said that the administration cannot make such heavy investments. “We tried to get people to invest part of the cost, but since they need to put in thousands of rupees, they are hesitant,” he added.
Re-strategising project, says zilla panchayat CEO
In addition, the project comes with the condition that the water supplied should only be surface water and borewell water is permitted only in cases where surface water is not available. “We tried to dig borewells. But as the water level is deep, it was becoming prohibitively expensive and unfeasible,” said the officer.
The project has hit the wall in hilly parts of Joida, Kumta, Siddapur and other taluks. M Priyanga, Chief Executive Officer, Uttara Kannada Zilla Panchayat, agreed that the cost of the project is high in these regions. “I have spoken to the chief engineer and we are now planning to re-strategise the project. I personally visited all the taluks where the implementation has taken a backseat.
The new strategy will reduce the price by about 30 per cent by redesigning overhead tanks,” she said. In the first phase, around 45,000 houses were connected in 2020-21. another 45,000 houses will be connected 2021-22 and 80,000 houses in 2022-23, she added.