The extension of drinking water pipelines to households in a village in Dang by UNDP and the Government of Nepal’s NCCSP has served to allay a long-running shortage of water in the area, as well as soothing tensions amid locals and easing life in general
Not long ago, Jamuna Chaudhary would often turn away people who came into her shop to get a drink of water. Water had long been a precious commodity in the village of Gadhwa in Dang—scarce enough to cause bickering among its people—and as time went on, and more and more wells dried up, such quarrels had become increasingly commonplace.
For 27-year-old Jamuna, who did not have a well of her own, and needed to walk 20 minutes to the banks of the river to collect water every day, giving away water to her customers for free was simply not an option.
“I did think of building my own well, but it would have been of no use,” she says. “There was no water underground.”
Located near the Rapti river basin, Gadhwa’s temperatures can soar during the summer to as high as 43 degrees, making the locals’ daily treks to collect water extremely arduous. And the monsoon brings along its own challenges. “When it was hot, the sand would burn my feet, and when it rained, the muddy roads would slow me down,” Jamuna says, talking about how she used to suffer from backaches because of the exertion. And going to fetch water also meant she would have to close down her shop. “It affected my sales and my livelihood,” she adds.
Although the Katahiya deep boring water scheme lay 10 minutes away from Jamuna’s house, in the absence of proper pipelines for distribution, the households it was meant to serve—including that of Jamuna’s—had been suffering an acute water shortage.
This, however, would change with the arrival of UNDP and the Government of Nepal’s Nepal Climate Change Support Programme (NCCSP). With funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the European Union, NCCSP launched a drinking water pipeline expansion project in Gadhwa, linking all 65 households in the area with water taps connected via pipelines to the Katahiya station. For four hours a day now, these households are supplied with drinking water.
“It’s changed everything,” Jamuna says. “I have access to water when I need it; I don’t have to walk to fetch it anymore.” The tap has also enabled her to spend more time at her shop, earn more from sales, and she has even started growing her own vegetables. Moreover, her backaches have disappeared and the neighbors are a great deal friendlier with one another than they used to be. “And I don’t fuss about customers taking a free drink in my shop anymore!” Jamuna says, laughing.
