RESHUN: For the last about three years, the residents of Reshun have been forced to drink contaminated and unfiltered water thanks to the apathy of the public health engineering department.
In July-August 2015, flash floods devastated agricultural fields, crops, houses and also washed away the tank from where the residents were supplied water. The floods also damaged the only powerhouse that provided electricity to most of Upper Chitral. While the provincial government failed to repair the powerhouse, its public health engineering department did not take any steps to reconstruct the water tank even after about three years.
As a result, water from the stream of the village is directly supplied to the residents through pipes without any filtration.
The water being supplied to our houses is full of mud, sand and other particles and in the summer it becomes even more contaminated and murky. We have no other option but to drink this contaminated and murky water which is causing a number of diseases, especially kidney ailment, among the locals: retired Subedar Major Mir Bahadur.
He said there are about 1,500 houses in Reshun and they all are facing this acute issue related to the drinking water. Despite repeated appeals to the authorities concerned, the issue is yet to be resolved. The government department is not taking the matter seriously and by not establishing a water tank and arranging filtration it has put the health of thousands of people at a stake, he added.
He appealed to the deputy commissioner of Chitral to order the department to take immediate steps for the construction of the water tank so that the residents could be supplied pure drinking water. –Nazir Hussain Shah