Tarun Karthick
Campbell Bay, 30 December 2022
The officers of the Andaman Public Works Department at Campbell Bay have made a mockery of the Jal Jeevan Mission, a Flagship Scheme of Govt. of India to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections in rural India.
While tens of lakhs have been spent on installing pipelines in Great Nicobar Island, the project is nothing more than a mere show-off. At Kamal Basthi in Campbell Bay which is one of the largest clusters of populated areas in Great Nicobar Island, the newly installed PPR Pipe is not operational.
In some areas of Campbell Bay Panchayat, the newly installed PPR Pipe has been made operational but the water received at the beneficiary’s end is 1/5th of the water received on the old GI Pipes.
The residents have no option but to use the old community taps installed at various locations and carry water in vessels to their homes.
The planning and execution of the project under the Jal Jeevan Mission is completely flawed. The PPR Pipes are lying bare on footpaths, near drains and on the shoulders of roads. The contractor executing the work in Campbell Bay Panchayat did not bother to conceal the pipes in trenches and the engineers happily accepted the sub-standard work and approved the payment of the consideration.
The whole project seems to be a product of corruption and what is more surprising is that the elected representatives and politicians are all silent.
While the general public is suffering, the officers responsible for the execution of the project are enjoying all luxuries of life in their comfortable abodes and are exploiting every penny of public money.
Nicobar Times has decided to highlight the issues related to this project regularly until the pipelines installed under Jal Jeevan Mission are made fully operational and an adequate quantity of water is supplied to every household.