Minister for Public Health Engineering and Irrigation & Flood Control, Sham Lal Choudhary today informed the House that 119 Water Supply Schemes are under execution in Poonch to provide drinking water to partially covered habitations of the district.Responding to a Calling Attention Notice by Shah Mohammad Tantray, the Minister said to meet the shortfall, 119 WSS schemes are being executed under various programmes which after completion shall further augment the water supply in Poonch district.The Minister said sufficient quantity of water is being provided to the inhabitants. He said there are 216 water supply schemes in Poonch district against which 97 stand completed under various programmes while 119 are ongoing under various programmes. He said there are 540 habitations out of which 289 are fully covered and 251 are partially covered.
He further informed the House that the total requirement of water supply is 80.16 lakh Gallons per day against which availability is to the extent of 61.62 lakh gallons per day. He said against the total requirement of 9 lakh gallons per day about 10 LGPD water is being supplied to the Poonch town from various sources.
He said Poonch being mostly a hilly terrain the PHE Department mainly depends upon traditional springs/Nallahs as sources for various water supply schemes. However, due to persistent recent dry spell, the discharge has reduced drastically. He said the PHE department intends to explore ground water as a source for water supply schemes by drilling bore wells/hand pumps along banks of major Nallahs. Sham Lal further said that due to absence of 132 KVA transmission line and frequent curtailments, the power scenario in the district is not so good which also causes interruption in regulating proper water supply & also frequent damages to the existing machinery on various pumping stations.
He said the old and damaged machinery aggravates the problem with more wear and tear resulting in further interruption of water supply. He said the department intends to replace the worn out machinery for which a DPR has been formulated which shall be projected against the proposed enhanced ceiling under NABARD during the current financial year. He said despite all odds, the department is trying to maintain the supply of water to the water scarce areas. He said 07 additional trollies have been engaged to supplement the water supply to the water scarce areas in additional to the existing 03 departmental water tankers. He said if need arises the department will engage more tankers/trollies in Poonch District.