In a suspected case of scam, villages which do not have any water connecting pipes under Hiyanglam assembly constituency in Kakching district of Manipur were found listed as ‘connected’ with tap water supply under records available for the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).
The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), a flagship programme, was launched in 2019 to provide all rural households with tap water supply in adequate quantity and prescribed quality by 2024.
In the villages of Arong Nongmaikhong, Pumlen Pat Khoidum Lamjao, there has been neither installation of any water tap nor pipes though the JJM fund has been reportedly released.
However, the record available in https://cmdashboard.mn.gov.in/departments/basic-infrastructure-monitoring/drinking-water-jal-jeevan-mission/ shows that pipe water has been installed even at Anganwadi and schools which are not functioning.
In a suspicious manner, the name of a dead person was also found listed among the records of households which have received water connections.
Speaking to the media, Salam Joy, a villager from Nongmaikhong Gram Panchayat, said that JJM has not been implemented properly in Arong Nongmaikhong, Laphupat, Khoidum village of Kakching district.
Arong Nongmaikhong is under Hiyanglam constituency of Kakching district and there are 11 wards with 772 households, he said. The village is located between Imphal River and Pumlenpat; there is water but it is not safe for drinking, he added.
“Why is the department lying to the Ministry when no water has been provided for drinking?” Joy questioned.
“I have gone through the website and noticed the dashboard clearly providing the names of individuals who have received pipe water connections. Our names have been found listed as water pipe connected. However, there are no water pipe connections whatsoever in our household,” he said.
After collecting the data available on the dashboard, he visited several houses whose names have been listed as pipe connected and to his surprise, most of the houses were not actually connected, he informed.
In Laphupat, according to the JJM website, there are 135 households, of which 88 households are connected with pipe water. There are two schools and three Anganwadis. All of them are listed as connected but no schools or Anganwadi have any tap water connection.
The scenario is the same at Khoidum. The website states that there are 113 households, of which 110 households are fitted with water facilities. Additionally, there are five schools and 17 Anganwadi and all of them are listed as fitted with tap water. But there is no water connection at all, he informed.
“I am extremely shocked to find that my name has been listed among the connected list when there is no connection in my house. Not only mine but the names of my wife, and son are also listed,” Joy said.
Most of the households have been listed as connected in the list despite the fact that no connection whatsoever has taken up, he said.
“I also found that one Ningthoujam Leimahal Devi, who had died more than 10 years ago even before the beginning of Mission, has been listed as connected in the dashboard record,” Joy informed.
The record also claims that seven schools have been connected with pipe water, but none of the schools has been connected, he said.
The water quality was good for the last five years before they started turning bad. So, the villagers bought water from private water suppliers of Kumbi at the rate of Rs 60 per 100 litre, he said.
A media team visited ‘Arong Nongmaikhong Primary School’ located at Arong Nongmaikhong and found that the building itself is damaged and the school appears to be not functioning. Two Anganwadi centres were also seen at the same complex.
The villagers said that the school is not functioning, and there are no students and they have not seen teachers coming to the school. About the Anganwadi centres, they said that one is for Nongmaikhong and the other is for another village.
In the dashboard, two Anganwadi centres along with the school have been connected with tap water. The media team did not find any tap water there.
An Anganwadi worker of Nongmaikhong said that she has not seen any tap water there though pipe connections were seen five years ago. The connection was also taken out, she added.
A similar situation was also found at Laphupat, Sekmaijin Gram Panchayat which have been listed as connected but no connection in reality.
The president of Rural Unemployment Development Association of Laphupat Tera, Khelen Ningthoujam told the media team that in the dashboard of the Ministry, over 100 households of Laphupat including schools have been listed as connected with tape water without any connection of water pipes.
Such an immoral act and open display of corruption, that too at the website of the Ministry is shocking. The authority should not get involved in such acts; it hurts the sentiments of the poor villagers, he said.
Concerning these fraudulent water connections, Salam Joy has raised a complaint to the Manipur Human Rights Commission (MHRC), which called for a status report.
In the status report, executive engineer of Kakching PHE Division submitted that the work was in good progress and in anticipation of its completion well before time, the anticipated list of beneficiaries were uploaded on the website. But due to sudden change in the situation in and around the village, the work was abandoned for sometime.
