INDORE: Summer is yet to knock the doors, but many parts of Nimar region have started facing water crisis. Dhar and Burhanpur districts have been declared as drinking water scarce areas until June 30 or till receiving sufficient rains. Bracing itself for the drinking water crisis in the summer, Dhar and Burhanpur district administration has also ordered different measures.
All 13 development blocks and as many as 802 villages of Dhar are fluorosis-affected while availability of clean drinking water to meet the demand is already a challenge in the district. With the collector Pankaj Jain declaring Dhar as a drinking water scarce area, local administration has put a ban on using water of different sources including tube wells, rivers, dams, canals, streams, springs, lakes, reservoirs, and wells for irrigation, industrial and such other purposes.
According to the collector, water sources can be acquired for maintaining the availability of drinking water in the affected area while tube well/borewell mining in the water scarcity area has been prohibited for any purpose without the permission of the authorized officer.
On proving violation of the said order, there is a provision of punishment including imprisonment of two years or fine or both under section 9 of Madhya Pradesh Peya Jal Praikshan Adhiniyam, 1986.
On Saturday, Dhar collector reviewed different works proposed and being carried out under ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’ and ‘Jal Nigam’ and instructed the officials concerned to speed up the same. He also ordered to lodge an FIR against the contractors, who fail to start/complete the assigned work in the given deadline.
Situation is however better in Burhanpur, where collector Praveen Singh has put a ban on digging tube-wells without permission of the officials concerned.
“A pipeline is being laid from Tapti River to supply tap water to all around 40,000 households under Burhanpur municipal corporation. Testing of the same is scheduled in May this year” Singh told TOI, adding that Burhanpur is expected resolve drinking water crisis in months.
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