The underground reservoir in the Dumduma Housing Board Colony where supply of water is yet to start as the pipeline required for it has not been laid. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, March 4: More than 30,000 residents of Jadupur, Begunia and two phases of Dumduma Housing Board Colony under ward No. 59 are experiencing multiple problems such as drinking water scarcity, damaged roads and shortage of power supply.

The ward includes areas such as Jadupur and Begunia and rehabilitation slums such as Raghunathnagar, Suka Vihar, Satyanagar, Barabari slum and Rehmadnagar.

People living in the Jadupur and Begunia still depend on open wells and tube-wells. The residents have been complaining of depletion of the water table in the area.

“Every year in the summer months, the people of these two semi-urban pockets and the rehabilitated slum areas experience water crisis,’’ said councillor Chhabi Das.

The two colonies under the Housing Board in Phase III and Phase V of Dumduma also do not have pipe-water supply as the underground reservoirs till date are not connected to the main supply pipeline.

However, trench digging work is under progress near Dumduma by the public health engineering department.

“Last year three tube-wells for Jadupur, two for Begunia and three for Housing Board Phase III were provided from the councillor’s funds, but that was not enough,’’ said Das. Ajay Biswal, a resident of the Raghunathnagar slum, said: “All the rehabilitated colonies have at least 1,500 plots allotted to people coming from different regions of the city. But hardly 150 houses have electricity and others are either living in dark or have taken illegal connection.’’

The councillor admitted that funds were available for power connection in the area, but the civic authorities were not doing enough in this regard. Even for infrastructure requirement of the rehabilitational slums there was nearly Rs 3.5 crore available but the infrastructure development work was not progressing smoothly.

The sewerage board has also damaged the roads in the entire region. “In Jadupur, three roads were taken up but only one could be completed so far. I waited for the job to finish but sewerage pipeline laying work is still incomplete after two years. Without the timely completion of the sewerage work it is useless to repair roads, but people don’t understand this and accuse us of non-performance,’’ said the councillor.

There was a plan to construct two roads in the housing board area and another in the Jadupur-Kochilaput Road, but the roadwork cannot start looking at the delay in the sewerage work. Baba Khan, a resident of Jadupur, said: “Apart from the roads, water, electricity and health-care delivery mechanism is not adequate.”

Local residents said that the primary health centre was renovated recently with assistance from the Ekamra MLA’s local area development funds but it lacked facilities such as expert doctors and adequate beds.