Tamil Nadu - Erode   

Families migrate in search of water

R. Sundaram

They get drinking water only once every eight days

IN THE QUEUE: Women wait with empty pots to collect water in Aruljothinagar near Moolanure. — Photo: M. Govarthan

ERODE: More than twenty families of workers have left Aruljothinagar near Moolanure in order to settle down in other places, because they are unable to find adequate water in their locality.

Aruljothinagar in Kalipalayam village in Moolanure panchayat is a backward area where water is a scarce commodity.

Over 100 families of daily-wage workers reside in the village.

They depend for their cleaning and washing needs on one borewell in the village and get drinking water only once in eight days.

Conservation

"We are forced to conserve the water by using it economically because only two to three pots will be available for eight days. Cauvery water is provided once in eight days and villagers collect it and save it carefully for domestic purposes. For other needs, we have to go to nearby areas three or four km away, in order to fetch water," Siva Ramasamy, one of the villagers, told The Hindu on Tuesday evening.

He said they had only one bore well, but the villagers were not using it since it had remained dry for a decade.

Repeated requests had been made to the panchayat, but nothing had come of it, he further observed.

Mr. Ramasamy said, "Because of such severe and unbearable water scarcity, more than 20 families of the village have migrated to other places. No relatives of the village people are ready to visit them, because of the water problem."

The villagers said that they had been allowed to collect water from the nearby Regulated Marketing Committee office, but now many of the villagers were not doing so, because they considered the water unfit for consumption.

Now after travelling a distance of two km, they collected Cauvery water from the comprehensive water supply scheme main pipe leading to Moolanure and Dharapuram and took it home.

The villagers made an appeal that a new borewell be sunk in their village and also that Cauvery water be provided to them on alternate days.

The officials said that due to poor flow in the Cauvery River, a limited quantity of water was being pumped from the river and supplied to the people.

Further proposals have been made to the district administration to flush the existing borewell.

The supply of water to the village through lorries is quite impossible they said.

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