With buckets in hand, girls walk 4 km daily in Madhya Pradesh's Damoh for toilet

Damoh: Girls from Damoh district in Madhya Pradesh have to walk for about four kilometers daily for the basic need of using a toilet.

With buckets in their hands, the girls of the district travel the distance with their school teacher and other staff workers. The sole reason or the culprit of the misery in this district which is about 250 kilometers away from state capital Bhopal is acute water crisis in the area.

"As there is a water crisis in the area, me and my friends along with our teacher walk four kilometres to-and-fro every day to use the toilet," a student said.

Despite two borewells in the region, the girls have to face this hardship as the water in them dried up due to intense heat conditions at the beginning of the season.

"The borewell goes dry every season, but we get water through the tanker. This time, we did not even have that," said the warden of the hostel.

Taking cognizance of the issue, the district collector said they have informed the matter to the higher authority, but are yet to receive any help from them.

"There is water shortage and we are trying to solve it. We have informed the authority, soon some solution would be found out," said the district collector of Damoh.

The story is similar at Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh town where villagers have to toil several kilometers to fetch drinking water. Women of the village walk about five km each day through forest road to collect water. The schemes launched by both the Central and the State governments have failed to reach them.

Water shortage has also hit the district of Mayurbhanj in Odisha, around 300 km from Bhubaneswar, where women of the area have to travel to far off places. The area has been facing acute drinking water crises for the last few days. Neither the wells nor stand posts have been providing water locals told news agency ANI.

In Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon village, around 70 km from state capital Raipur, villagers walk 5-6 km daily to fetch drinking water as acute water crisis hits many districts of the state as borewells dry up due to increase in temperature.

The condition is similar at Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu where ground water level has dipped due to intense heat.