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Water
project revives hope of Tharis
Text and photos
Amar Guriro
KARACHI: Just imagine walking through the sizzling sand dunes with
an earthen pitcher filled with around two gallons of water on your
head when the mercury level is hitting 47 degrees Celsius. This
torture is a routine matter for Moomal who fetches potable water
from a well located two kilometres away from her home.
When asked how difficult is it to bring water from such a long
distance every afternoon she smiled and answered in her mother
tongue, Dhatiki, "The duty to bring water for my home came with my
dowry.” Moomal lives in Dedsarh, a small village of Taluka Diplo,
comprising of around 100 households of Chara, Mandhra, Megwar and
Kolhi, located 40 kilometers south of Mithi, the gateway of the Thar
Desert, district Tharparkar.
Moomal is not the only one carrying out her duty; a group of women
and some children can be seen walking with pitchers on their head in
the scorching sun. The villagers revealed that it is the basic duty
of the womenfolk and children throughout the Thar Desert to bring
water for household consumption, as the male members of the village
are busy with the cattle or earning a livelihood. The village has no
other source of potable water and is dependant on underground water
from the wells or the rain that does not last more then four months
since the villagers have no tanks to collect enough rainwater.
Though the village has eight wells, when the east wind blows, the
water level of these wells reduces; aside from this, the mineral
contamination is so high in the wells that the villagers prefer to
bring water from the wells of Bitanee, a small village located two
kilometers away from their village.
Sind Arid Zone Authority (SAZDA) has built a seven foot deep
cemented pond to collect 236,000 liters of rainwater and another
famous NGO of the Thar Desert, the Thardeep Rural Development
Program (TRDP) has also built another pond for the same purpose,
however, both the projects have failed to facilitate the villagers.
When the Sukaar Foundation Trust (SFT), a local NGO on water,
sanitation and hygiene, announced the establishment of underground
rainwater harvesting tanks with covered roofs in collaboration with
Wateraid Pakistan and its partner Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), the
villagers were filled with great hope and joy, as the water ponds
were open and the rainwater evaporated in the blazing heat within a
few weeks.
The SFT dug a vast area in the village and cemented and covered it
so that the rainwater would not evaporate and would also be
prevented from being contaminated.
"We have divided this model project into separate small tanks and
given each tank a hand pump so that a certain number of the houses
in the village may get water through out the year," said SFT
Chairman Ashok Suthar.
Suthar revealed that if the pilot project proves successful, then
the SFT, in collaboration with the community and the local
government, will facilitate replicate it in other water scarce areas
of Tharparkar to cope with the acute water scarcity problem.
Now the villagers are waiting for the rains. "The water scarcity is
badly affecting our lives, as the women and children have to go
everyday to bring water from far away places and that water too is
brackish. The rainwater is a great source of potable water, but we
have no tanks or ponds in our village to collect it, so we believe
that these new underground tanks will change the lives of everyone
in our village," said a primary school teacher of the village,
Muhammad Charo. The villagers used to collect rainwater in tanks
locally known as Tanko. However, these traditional tanks are small
and water collected in them only lasts for a few months. "Mostly
people collect rainwater on their rooftop but since the roofs are
muddy and are made from a mixture of clay and donkey and cow dung,
questions about water purity are raised. Hence we have introduced a
low cost construction material with which villagers can safely store
water," said Suthar.
When this scribe attempted to contact Dr Sono Khangrani of TRDP to
ask about the failure of the TRDP pond project in the village, he
was not available and in his presence another office-bearer of TRDP
Dr Khataumal refused to issue any statement.
Daily Times:Friday,May 22,2009
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