Atleast 20 tubewells to come up at six blocks in Alipurduar

Kolkata: The state Backward Classes Welfare and Tribal Development department will set up around 20 deep tubewells in each of the six blocks in Alipurduar district to mitigate the problems of drinking water for the tribal community. The department has already floated tender for constructing tubewells in some of the areas.

"The tribal people in Alipurduar depend upon the waterfalls for drinking water. It is a challenge to install tubewells in some of these areas as they are stony. But we have taken up the task and will bore 20 deep tubewells each at strategic locations in all the six blocks of Alipurduar," said Binay Krishna Barman, Minister for Tribal Development.

The blocks in Alipurduar are Madarihat-Birpara, Alipurduar I, Alipurduar II, Falakata, Kalchini and Kumargram. The six blocks contain 66 gram panchayats and nine census towns.

A senior official in the Tribal Development department said that tubewells in normal circumstances is a welcome solution but people in the tribal belt, particularly in districts like Bankura, Purulia, Jhargram and parts of Birbhum suffer from water shortage during the summer months. So piped water supply can only permanently mitigate the problem of water. The percentage of people who benefitted from piped water supply till 2010 during the Left Front regime was 37.95. Till 2000 it was 21.85 per cent.

"We have taken up Jalabandhu project under which our department has set up a target to supply of piped water in all the districts in the state by 2024. Several projects related to supply of drinking water has been taken up both in South Bengal and North Bengal," said Saumen Kumar Mahapatra, state PHE minister.

A major project of piped water supply involving Rs 1,300 crore is going on in full swing in Bankura and East Midnapore. "Our project will benefit all the people in the state including the tribals," added Mahapatra.