Looking forward: ‘Drainage officials managing waters in non-technical way’

Rana Inder Singh, Independent MLA from Sultanpur Lodhi, is annoyed at the way water resources have been handled by government officials and continuously flooding villages in his constituency. He spoke to Jalandhar Tribune on flood-related issues.

“I am really amazed at the way officials of the Drainage Department work. They are managing waters in a completely uncalculated and non-technical way. They know the amount of water that is stored in Ranjit Sagar Dam. They know the capacities of the rivers and they have all technical know-how about the Harike headworks. Still, they are punishing the farmers and poor villagers because of their incapability, lack of planning and a series of lapses that they are committing. The Beas has become 10 km wide in my area with its waters spilling all over. As many as 25,000 acres of farmland in my constituency is in water. The level of Beas water was up by 1.5 feet than Friday all starting from Bagowal village till the end. Water can overflow from the bundh any time. There are hundreds of villagers living and cultivating the fields within the dhussi bundh side. They are all forced to spend nights on the bundh. I saw them at Kammewal village yesterday. They do not want to go to relief camps. They just want the floodwater to recede so that they can go back home. Even their homes have developed cracks and become unsafe,” he said.

“Four days ago, I had organised a dharna at Harike pressing for release of water from there to Pakistan side. They released 55,000 cusecs of water, which went up to 1.6 lakh cusecs at one point of time. The flow of water has now dropped down again to 68,000 cusecs. I think we need to sit on a dharna at the site again to seek relief for our people. They already have Rs 200 crore coming from the Centre. I will certainly take a deserving amount of Rs 22 crore for my people,” he concludes.

(As told to Deepkamal Kaur)

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