CHITRAL (Gul Hamaad Farooqi) 3200 people of Orghoch suburb area of Chitral were totally deprived of water facility. They repeatedly applied for water, but all in vain. . When they became disillusioned with the authorities, they threatened to immigrate to Afghanistan to record their protest, but the authorities motivated them, assuring them that they will definitely be provided water.
The provincial government has completed a drinking water project at a cost of Rs 8.201 million. The Department of Public Health Engineering has built a 30,000 gallon tank that will provide clean drinking water to the people here.
The project was inaugurated by Wazirzada Kalash, Special Assistant to the Chief Minister, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for Minority Affairs, who assured the people of the area that the present government was sincere and serious in resolving their issues. People of the area became very happily and distributed sweets as well as thanked the provincial government.
Farid-ul-Haq, a resident of Orgoch, said that women here were forced to fetch water from rivers in pots and in distant places, but due to this contaminated water, most of the children were suffering from stomach ailments. Now drinking water has been provided to us for which we are very happy and thank the government for fulfilling our long awaitged demand.
And Abdul Haq, another resident of Ghoch, says that there was a severe shortage of drinking water for the people here. Now Public Health Engineering department has built a tank which will solve our problem to some extent, but we would also demand this from the provincial government. He demand to provide drinking water for us on a regular basis because the source of this water is our irrigation stream from which half of the water irrigates our fields and half of the water falls into the tank which is insufficient.
Muhammad Asif and a resident of Orghuch who works in Punjab. He say that we had a lot of water problem. If we lived outside the house, we would be worried about the house 24 hours a day because the children were small and could not bring water from far away. If the housewife used to go out to fetch water in the pot, the children would often fall and get injured in the house. Now, our problem has been solved. Our women have been get ride from etching water on their heads. They also demand that a solar-powered motor be used to fetch water for us from Rambor or where there is a spring so that we do not have to migrate again in the future.
It should be noted that in the past, work was started to bring water through a four-inch pipe for Orghoch, but the project failed and now these 400 pipes are being uprooted again. The project failed miserably. There was a lot of frustration in the area. Most of these pipes rusted, some broke during road construction, some were swept away by floods and most of the pipes were damaged during the construction of Abdul Wali Khan Bypass Road and had to be removed. Until then, the area was deprived of both irrigation and drinking water. When the people here used to taunt someone about the shortage of water, it was specifically mentioned that it is not Orghuch where water is not available.
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