Water tank collapsed five years ago, with it their hopes for drinking water

Under the ARWSP, a pipeline was to be laid from Vanakbori dam 15 km away to the village for which Rs 14.63 crore was spent for the pipelines. Roopchand Sevkhani, the chairperson of the vigilance enquiry committee that monitors these schemes, said, “During our investigations, we found that the pipelines were broken in several places.” With no water from the ARWSP, villagers from Samli had to try and dig their own wells.

Samli sarpanch Janak Dave said, “The gram panchayat funded a bore and motor that supplies the village with water for an hour each morning. That is the only running water they get. For drinking, we have to depend on the lone hand pump”

For their part, the Public Health Works Department (PHWD) owned up to the water scarcity, and even said amends were in progress. Godhra deputy executive engineer, PHWD, P.M. Parmar, said the problems arose in 2002 when the elevated water service reservoir in Tarsang, located some 10 km away, collapsed. “The reservoir construction was poor and it collapsed. Another reservoir is underway in another village after which the water supply will be restored,” Jani said.

Sources in the PHWD admitted to the problem of broken pipes. A senior engineer on grounds of anonymity said, “After the reservoir collapsed, we were asked to pump the water in harder. This excess pressure caused a strain on the pipes and several cracked under the pressure.” He added that a new scheme was underway to replace the pipes and that the PHWD was waiting for approval from Gandhinagar.

The Panchmahals vigilance committee, which monitors these schemes, found that money had been given to contractors but few projects have been implemented in full. Panchmahals MP Bhupendra Solanki, the chairman of the vigilance committee, admitted that few meetings had been held so far. “There have been problems in many schemes and a meeting has been called in the first week of April to discuss all the water schemes in Panchmahals,” Solanki said.

The vigilance enquiry committee found glaring errors in the PHWD reports about the ARWSP in June last year. Agreeing with the poor water situation in Samli, enquiry committee chairperson Sevkhani said, “Samli is also a pumping station for eight villages which lie beyond it. However, the pumping station in Samli has been dysfunctional for the last five years.” He said Rs 14.63 crore was spent on laying pipes and building pump houses under the ARWSP scheme in the region.