Swajal Drinking Water Scheme – Dhariwal : An Example Of Resolving Drinking Water Problem By Community Effort

Gram Panchayat Dhariwal, Block – Bahadrabad, Laksar, is situated in Haridwar district. In-spite of its proximity to the road head the village was facing crises of adequate availability of drinking water. There were some hand pumps installed in the village for drinking water, but these used to dry-up during the summers. Most of the villagers had installed shallow hand pumps, which supplied contaminated water. As a result, occurrence of water borne diseases was quite common in the village. When the villagers learnt about the Sector Reform Project, then the Gram Panchayat submitted its proposal to SWAJAL District Project Management Unit (DPMU) – Haridwar for the construction of water supply scheme in their village. The Gram Panchayat - Dhariwal was selected for the construction of scheme in the year 2002. The construction work of the scheme was started after the community agreed to follow the basic principles of Sector Reform Project such as payment of community contribution against capital cost, participation in planning, implementation and 100% operation and maintenance by the community. For providing assistance to the user drinking water and sanitation committee, a village technical committee was formed. By the efforts of the community the scheme was completed in the year 2004 in which about Rs. 17.53 lakh were spent against DPR cost of Rs. 20.64 lakh. Thus there was substantial saving in cost of construction.

At present the scheme is being maintained by the user's committee and currently 275 households are being provided water supply connection. The committee is collecting Rs. 25 per month per household as water charges for maintenance. For new connection, the concerned household has to pay Rs. 2100 as connection charges. Timely collection of these charges has enabled continuous increase in the committee’s maintenance fund. After paying all recurring expenses, at present the committee has deposited about Rs. 60,000 in its bank account.

The people are happy with the good quality of water which has reduced water borne disease. The scheme is providing sufficient quantity of water and has led to save their time which used to be spent in fetching water, it has also reduced physical burden of the family members specially that of women members. Today all villagers are satisfied with the working of the User Water and Sanitation Committee and are providing their co-operation to the committee whenever required.