For 20 years there were no waters and now Mineral Water for free!

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(Free-Press-Release.com) December 30, 2008 -- Udaipur: “Every cloud has a silver line.” This saying came true at village Bichhadi of Udaipur district, where people were facing drinking water problem for last two decades, but today they are getting as much mineral water as required, that’s too for free!

It was 1985, when industrial effluent of a chemical factory contaminated the ground water of entire Bichhadi area, near Udaisagar Lake. After a long deal of political, social and legal fights, the Apex Court ordered to close the factory. The factory was closed, but it left a great problem for the villagers. They were left to drink that contaminated water, which gradually caused too many diseases. During these years, a number of NGO’s and other Organisation encashed this issue, designed too many projects and carried out a number of agitations but resulted nothing. The problem remained same.

Later on, Hindustan Zinc Limited (HZL) came forward to take the responsibility to supply drinking water to the villagers. For more than a decade, HZL has keeping its social commitment. It has deployed a number of tankers for good quality water supply to the people of Bichhadi. In each PHALA (colony) of the village, plastic drums were supplied for storage purpose. When tankers reached the village, these drums were filled and then villagers used to take the water to their homes. However, the quality of this water was also remained under question.

“Now the villagers are happy, they are getting 100 TDS value mineral water for free. All credit goes to Rotary Club of Udaipur Mewar, who has established here an RO plant which purifies 1100 liter water per hour. The water is supplied through PHED pipe line to the RO plant and here it is purified.” Says Mr. Jagannath, the Deputy Sarpanch of the village. The plant was inaugurated recently by Shiv Kishore Sanadhaya, the Chairman, UIT Udaipur.

The Rotary Club of Udaipur Mewar thought a unique solution to the problem and through an international matching grant, spent a sum of Rs. 18 lacs to establish the plant. The matching grant was received from The Rotary Club of Melbourne, Australia through The Rotary Foundation (TRF).

This grant was the result of continued efforts of Rotary team under the leadership of the then President Dr, Trilok Sharma. Later, a project implementation team was constituted under the leadership of Rtn. Hansraj Choudhary as Project Director. The project took almost one year in completion. Now everyday almost 300 families are taking water from this plant.

“The major difficulty was the maintenance of the plant. Every month there will be an electricity bill and day to day care of the plant which involves money. We encouraged the villagers to constitute a committee and charge a minimum amount per month to make this project self sufficient.” Says Rtn. Hansraj Choudhary of Rotary Club of Udaipur Mewar. The efforts were successful and now the maintenance of the plant is being looked after by a 11 member committee of the villagers.
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