“We have been deprived of drinking water after the Assembly elections in mid-May. The Kerala Water Authority (KWA) has stopped supply to the area on the northern bank of the New Market Canal (Chanthathodu),” said Rajeena Varghese and Jagadamma, two housewives from Ayyanavely in the upper Kuttanad village of Peringara on Monday.
Unbundling their grievances before district panchayat member Sam Eapen, Ms. Varghese, who suffers from renal problems, said she was fetching water from Vengal, 2.5 km from their hamlet, in an auto for the past 50 days.
“I went to the KWA office at Thiruvalla and pleaded with the authorities for water supply to our hamlet, at least twice a week, but to no avail,” she said.
The wells in the locality are polluted due to seepage of brackish and filthy water from the network of canals that have turned into pools of filth due to unscientific land conversion and road construction.
Another local resident Sasi said he fetched water from Vengal and Ezhinjillom in his three-wheeler for the Mundappally settlement colony in Peringara panchayat.
Another villager, Sureshkumar, said some traders supplying water to the households charged Rs. 250 for a tank (500 litres) of chlorinated water collected from the KWA waterlines.
The people residing on the canal bunds (protection walls) surrounding the paddy fields in the low lands of upper Kuttanad are waiting for resumption of water supply. The promises made by successive governments to the people had remained on paper, says Mr. Eapen, president of the Upper Kuttanad Nelkarshaka Samiti.
Though the KWA has waterlines even in remote corners of upper Kuttanad, disruption in the supply of chlorinated pipe water is a regular feature in the region.
The people of upper Kuttanad are pinning hopes that Water Resources Minister Mathew T.Thomas, the local MLA, will take steps to address their grievances.
Domestic use
Many farm worker families in upper Kuttanad live in small houses constructed on the earthen bunds along the canals surrounding the paddy fields.
Many people, especially those belonging to the BPL sections, depend mostly on the canal water for their domestic chores.
They have adopted certain crude methods for filtering the reddish-yellow water with a foul odour collected from wells and canals in the locality. They use their own system of purification in which the well water is passed through different ‘plastic pot chambers’ filled with sand and charcoal to collect the filtered water for domestic use.
The people also put rainwater to maximum use and have adopted various rainwater harvesting measures.
