by Sharmila Bhowmick, originally posted on April 25, 2016

NOIDA: It’s a mid-summer nightmare at Noida’s Gijjhor village in sector 53. One of the city’s many urban villages, the 50,000 strong locality has been receiving contaminated, turbid, stinking supply of water for at least last six months. The quality of the water supply has only become worse recently, with people reportedly taking ill, after direct or indirect consumption or usage of the water.

Earlier, in February, TOI reported how similar complaints of contaminated water supply had surfaced at Kanchenjunga apartments in sector 53, after which the Noida Authority intervened. At Kanchenjungha, the contamination was caused by worn of joints of galvanised iron pipes. The contaminated water had led to a spree of disease outbreaks among the residents.

At Gijhor, the local residents complain that the water supply has been going bad to worse and presently it is smelly and turbid. “We have no alternative but to use it. We use the direct water for bathing, brushing, washing clothes and dishes and even to wash our vegetables or mix the dough. We can’t afford bottled water for all this. Sometimes people are even compelled to drink this water,” Birender Rathod, a local resident, said.
“For drinking we get the bottled water, but you can’t completely depend on that for other work, so directly or indirectly you end up consuming the supply water. Children have been falling sick. We don’t know how this can get fixed,” Poonam Devi, a local resident, said.

“So many children from poor families come to school with bottles filled with tap water. I then make them throw that and fill their bottles with RO water. It is a dangerous situation and there’s a great health risk here. The water is so bad that the RO machine at my school needs to be serviced every few weeks,” Poonam Chauhan, principal of Sunbreeze charitable school, in Gijhor, said.

“I have made complaint with Noida Authority and they have told us that the problem will be addressed soon. There is a leakage issue which has resulted in the contamination and they will fix it,” Sanjay Pradhan, the Pradhan of Gijhor said.

“The underground pipes of these sectors were made of galvanised iron and at many place the joints of the pipes have worn off. This has led to the contamination of supply water. We will get this checked. Also we need to see if all the lines in the area are authorised supply lines. There is no problem in the quality of water supply, it is all about the wearing out of pipes which will need to be fixed,” Hom Singh Yadav, Chief Engineer, Noida Authority told TOI.