Srinagar: Water supply lines remaining frozen in Srinagar and other areas of Kashmir have triggered severe crisis.
The early morning light snowfall and minimum temperature settling at minus 3.1 in Srinagar on Monday much above minus 8.8 recorded one night earlier brought some respite to the people, but water crisis continues to haunt the denizens of the summer capital of J&K.
It’s after a longtime that Kashmir is witnessing such a harsh winter which is refusing to relent even in February. “The government needs to intervene to mitigate sufferings of the people. The Jal Shakti Department needs to deploy tankers to help overcome the water crisis in the city. All the taps are frozen and at many places people are melting ice to meet their requirements. Things are turning from bad to worse,” said an observer.
He said that in the yesteryears when Kashmir used to witness such freezing conditions, the water works department used to be at the forefront as the officials knew that such conditions trigger severe crisis. “This year things have been different and it seems that the officials of Jal Shakti Department have been caught napping,” the observer added.
At many places in Srinagar, even the main water supply lines are frozen and it looks like that life won’t return to normal till the weather improves. “Even if sunshine returns it can take many days for these pipes to open up. Till normalcy returns alternate ways and means have to be explored to keep the life moving. The water crisis has crippled the life as people are finding it very hard to live a normal life,” the observer said.
A 70-year old Ghulam Mohammad Khan said, “When we were young we faced similar situation on many occasions, especially during Chillai Kalan, but at that point of time Kashmir had many natural springs and they used to come handy. But as on date all these springs have dried up. In good old days water tankers used to move around in the city. But this time around we have seen very few water tankers coming for the rescue of a common man.”
Another resident said that the experts should come up with advisories to inform the people how the frozen pipes can be restored. “People are using hot water and at some places they are even trying to defreeze these pipes by burning them, but nothing seems to be working,” he said, adding, “We are hoping that the weather will improve and the temperature will start settling above freezing point soon,” he added.