April 15: The last time water trickled out of the community tubewell in Algapur’s Kalinagar was in October last year.

For the past six months, residents of Kalinagar have walked 3km everyday for a can of water. And this takes care of the entire day’s drinking and sanitation!

Even after the public health engineering minister, Rihan Daimary, promised during his tour last week to provide safe drinking water and sanitation facilities in order to improve the lifestyle in the village under the total sanitation programme, this situation has not improved.

“The problem started in the month of October last year when the public health engineering department suddenly stopped the water supply under the water supply scheme of Kalinagar Part I because of technical difficulties,” a source in the public health engineering department said.

The public health engineering department in Hailakandi said technical difficulties have crept into the functioning of the water supply scheme.

Nearly 132 families living in the village, located near National Highway 53, are dependent on the supply.

“It is a nightmare and only we know the problems, which we face. During the rainy season, it is difficult to walk, let alone carry water, which makes it an insurmountable task” a villager said.

The women in the village are the worst sufferers as they have to fetchwater from the other projects located 3km from the village.

With no solution in sight, the villagers now plan to write to the public health engineering minister Rihan Daimary about their problem.

The villagers said the department officials were reluctant to undertake repair work to fix the technical snarls in the water supply scheme.

However, the officials in public health engineering department said they were trying to restore water supply, which had been stopped six months back because of technical difficulties.

In the village, dominated mostly by Muslims, the maintenance of the sole mosque in the area has also been affected because of water scarcity.

“There has to be an early solution or else we will have to think of a different course of action,” another villager said.