The 43 crore clean drinking water project in 21 Shamli villages under the national rural drinking water supply program by National Green Tribunal (NGT) became defunct till now, after its inauguration in 2020 due to maintenance and operational issues.

Executive engineer of Jal Nigam, Deepak Kumar, said that Rs 43 crore had been spent to provide pure drinking water to about 83,823 people in 21 villages in Shamli.

As a part of the project, solar water pumps and overhead water tanks were installed to provide safe drinking water. However, the solar pumps became defective due to a lack of maintenance and labour, thefts of equipment and a shortage of water cleaning agents.

A pump operator in Khanpur Talwa Majra village, Shailendra Panwar, told the media that the water supply was started on 25 December 2020, but the chlorine mixing machine was not installed on the water tank, and due to faulty solar panel, it was difficult to fill the tank.

Another operator at Bhikki Deh village, Vipin Kumar, said that because of the broken pipeline, the water tank gets exhausted quickly. Some defects in the pump, solar panel and chlorine also ran out.

According to the locals of Fatehpur village, two solar batteries were stolen from the water tank, resulting in the stoppage of the machine.

Further, many water tank operators complained of not receiving salaries on time.

Junior engineer of Jal Nigam, Saurabh Tyagi, said that the operators at each water tank were asked to collect Rs 50 per month from the villagers for collecting their salaries and readdressing the issues.

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