More than 60 tribal families in the villages of Chinnala Combai and Anaipallam in Coonoor worked together with the forest department to ensure that their villages got water from a check dam in Pilloor Mattam.
The residents of the two villages said they used to face acute water shortage during the summer months, and from October to December every year.
R. Shanthi, a resident of Chinnala Combai, said that during times of acute water shortage, people could not bathe, and had to resort to extreme water-saving methods till the rains came. “Otherwise, we will have to walk more than four kilometres to the nearest water source for a single pot of water,” she said. But, this was fraught with risk owing to the presence of wild animals, such as elephants.
The residents urged forest officials to lay a pipe from the nearest check dam in Pilloor Mattam to Anaipallam. District Forest Officer D. Guruswamy said the residents volunteered to work alongside forest staff to lay the pipe to the village.
One of the residents said they had worked for over three-weeks to lay the pipe to the village, and that life had become a lot easier now.
The efforts have also helped build trust between the forest department and the local community. “We can see that people are a lot more cooperative with the forest department and hope that in the long-run, such efforts will also help in better forest management,” said Mr. Guruswamy.
