Sindh: Water project revives hope of Tharis

[Naveed Yaseen]

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.

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