The residents of Santipur hillside in Guwahati are reconsidering casting their votes in the upcoming elections after they have been left deprived of proper water supply for the last twenty years.
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About 30 households of Nizaramukh Path, PNGB Road, Santipur hillside have been struggling with water supply for the last two decades despite having a Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) water tank in their proximity.
These Assamese-speaking families residing on the hilltop have complained that the municipal authorities have failed to provide them with the house-to-house pipelines from the tank thus leaving them with no other option but to survive on dirty water that gets accumulated beneath the tank after the same overflows.
A resident, Nirmali Deka told G Plus, “Firstly, the municipality never gives regular water. The tank is filled every four to five days, sometimes we are left for weeks without water. There are pipes connected to the households below, but for us we have to keep on waiting till the water tank overflows and water accumulates below the tank. From there we collect the water in large common drums.”
“We have these five-litre ‘gallons’ (meaning drums) which we fill and carry home. The only way to our houses is these steep steps and we cannot carry the water in buckets,” she added.
The locals have connected a pipe from the tank to collect some clean water directly for drinking as the overflowing water is unfit to consume. With irregular water supply, these thirty households survive on just one small well the remaining days.
They allege that despite constant persuasion and requests to the GMC and the local Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), their prayers have been left unheard for years. In this upcoming Assam election these residents are considering not to utilize their right to franchise as a mark of protest.
“We have voters’ ID, we regularly cast our votes. Despite residing in the city, the MLA Ramendra Narayan Kalita visits us once every five years to ask for our votes. But we never see him again after the elections. The women are starting to have pain in their legs and other ailments due to this daily struggle of collecting water. We might not vote in this election as we feel like outcasts anyway,” added a woman struggling to climb the steps with a baby in one hand and gallons of water in the other.