Residents of Sultanwind Road localities complain of contaminated water supply

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, May 5

About 6,000 residents of at least four localities on the Sultanwind road have complained of receiving a contaminated water supply for nearly the past month. These localities are: Ram Nagar, Uttam Nagar, Mohan Nagar and Bhag Nagar.

For a majority of houses, piped water being provided by the Amritsar Municipal Corporation is the only source of drinking water. They fear consuming contaminated water can result in water-borne and other diseases.

Residents are refraining from using contaminated water as it has a foul smell. Most of the residents in the localities collect water for drinking and cooking from those houses, which have borewells and other sources of drinking water.

A homemaker, Kamla Khullar of Ram Nagar locality said her family was using tap water only for washing clothes. She asked the MC to get it checked if the quality of water being supplied to households was getting mixed with contaminated water supplies. Samples should be collected in bottles to be tested in the laboratory, she added. She fears the outbreak of vector-borne diseases.

Kamaljit Kaur, another resident of Uttam Nagar, said she had been getting a contaminated water supply. A homemaker, she said her family was compelled to purchase bottles of drinking water. They were forced to shell out a lot of money on buying drinking water as the piped water, they alleged, was not fit for drinking.

Comrade Buta Ram of Mohan Nagar area said a two-decade-old borewell, installed in Safadiyan Wali Park, went dry last year. The MC dug a borewell in another corner of the park through which it had been supplying piped water to at least four localities for over the past month. Initially, they believed in the assurances made by officials that it would start supplying clean water soon. Now, the colour of water was no longer pale, but foul smell had started emanating from it. He said chemically treated water from nearby factories might have contaminated the underground water, so he demanded that the quality of water should be got checked from a government laboratory.

Shailinder Singh Shelly, former councillor of Ward No.42, said he was familiar with the trouble. There was nothing new in it. After the digging and starting a new borewell, these types of problems were normal and these might disappear with the continuous outflow of water from it. “If residents fear the water is getting contaminated due to the nearby closed factory water, the borewell water would be checked. Otherwise, a 900-foot borewell has been dug on the spot,” added the former councillor.

Not consuming foul water: Residents

Residents are refraining from using contaminated water as it has a foul smell. Most of the residents in the localities collect water for drinking and cooking from those houses, which have borewells and other sources of drinking water.