KAILASAHAR, March 15 (TIWN): Clean, safe drinking water is scarce. Today, most of the rural people in the so called developing Tripura don't have access to it. Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from little plastic bottles. Water is the foundation of life. And still today, all across the state, far too many people spend their entire day searching for it. In places hilly areas of the state, time lost gathering water and suffering from water-borne diseases is limiting people's true potential. The start-on dry spell recently has hit the villages under the Unakoti district, with the villagers suffering from acute drinking water crisis. However but it is mentionable here that Minister Tapan Chakroborty on March 11 at Gournagar Block under Unakoti district stated that the tankers will be deployed soon to supply water to the villagers. Minister also urged the concerned administration to create water bodies as soon as possible so that the villagers can make an easy access to it. But, yet today no tankers has been sent to the area with no water bodies found yet today.

The problem of water scarcity is a growing one in the rural Tripura, especially in the villages like Deldacherra, Muruibari, Hiracherra under the Unakoti district. Water scarcity looms large at the areas with the villagers have to move far-flung areas to fetch safe drinking water. The entire locality doesn’t have access to any source of drinking water including ring wells, Mark II deep tube wells and other water bodies. The areas are mostly tribal dominated. The villagers, mostly from indigenous origin, manage their stock of drinking water by crating holes inside the hilly craters, allowing spaces to be filled with the dripping water.

However, with this the recent statement of Minister Tapan Chakroborty has turned bleak with no water tankers reached the mentioned tribal dominated and CPI (M) ruled ADC area. While expressing deep concern over the drinking water crisis issue Hiracherra Panchayat (ADC village) Chairman Nungthanga Darlong said that the area has been suffering from acute water crisis since a long period, with the villagers suffering at large.